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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "//www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="//www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0;"/><title>Luke 1 Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers</title><link rel="canonical" href="https://biblehub.com/commentaries/expositors/luke/1.htm" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/5001com.css" type="text/css" media="Screen" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="../spec.css" type="text/css" media="Screen" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 4800px), only screen and (max-device-width: 4800px)" href="/4801.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 1550px), only screen and (max-device-width: 1550px)" href="/1551.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 1250px), only screen and (max-device-width: 1250px)" href="/1251.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 1050px), only screen and (max-device-width: 1050px)" href="/1051.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 900px), only screen and (max-device-width: 900px)" href="/901.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 800px), only screen and (max-device-width: 800px)" href="/801.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 575px), only screen and (max-device-width: 575px)" href="/501.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-height: 450px), only screen and (max-device-height: 450px)" href="/h451.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/print.css" type="text/css" media="Print" /><script type="application/javascript" src="https://scripts.webcontentassessor.com/scripts/8a2459b64f9cac8122fc7f2eac4409c8555fac9383016db59c4c26e3d5b8b157"></script><script src='https://qd.admetricspro.com/js/biblehub/biblehub-layout-loader-revcatch.js'></script><script id='HyDgbd_1s' src='https://prebidads.revcatch.com/ads.js' type='text/javascript' async></script><script>(function(w,d,b,s,i){var cts=d.createElement(s);cts.async=true;cts.id='catchscript'; cts.dataset.appid=i;cts.src='https://app.protectsubrev.com/catch_rp.js?cb='+Math.random(); document.head.appendChild(cts); }) (window,document,'head','script','rc-anksrH');</script></head><body><div id="fx"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="fx2"><tr><td><iframe width="100%" height="30" scrolling="no" src="../cmenus/luke/1.htm" align="left" frameborder="0"></iframe></td></tr></table></div><div id="blnk"></div><div align="center"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="maintable"><tr><td><div id="fx5"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="fx6"><tr><td><iframe width="100%" height="245" scrolling="no" src="//biblehu.com/bmcom/luke/1-1.htm" frameborder="0"></iframe></td></tr></table></div></td></tr></table></div><div align="center"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="maintable3"><tr><td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" id="announce"><tr><td><div id="l1"><div id="breadcrumbs"><a href="//biblehub.com">Bible</a> > <a href="/commentaries/">Commentary</a> > <a href="../">Ellicott</a> > <a href="../luke/">Luke</a></div><div id="anc"><iframe src="/anc.htm" width="100%" height="27" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></div><div id="anc2"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tr><td><iframe src="/anc2.htm" width="100%" height="27" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></td></tr></table></div></div></td></tr></table><div id="movebox2"><table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><div id="topheading"><a href="../mark/16.htm" title="Mark 16">◄</a> Luke 1 <a href="../luke/2.htm" title="Luke 2">►</a></div></td></tr></table></div><div align="center" class="maintable2"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tr><td><div id="leftbox"><div class="padleft"><div class="vheading">Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers</div><div class="chap">THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.<p>Luke.</span><p>BY<p>THE VERY REV. E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D.,<p><span class= "ital">Late Dean of Wells.</span><p><span class= "bld">INTRODUCTION<p>TO<p>THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.<p>I. The writer.</span>—But one person bearing the name of Luke, or, in its Greek form, Lucas, appears in the New Testament; and of him the direct notices are few and meagre. He is named as being with St. Paul during his first imprisonment at Rome, and is described as “the beloved physician” (<a href="/colossians/4-14.htm" title=" Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.">Colossians 4:14</a>). He is still with him, stress being laid on his being the only friend who remained, when the Apostle’s work was drawing to its close (<a href="/2_timothy/4-11.htm" title="Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with you: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.">2Timothy 4:11</a>). Beyond these facts all is inference or conjecture. Both conjecture and inference are, however, in this case, full of interest, present many unexpected coincidences, and, by the convergence of many different lines of circumstantial evidence, raise the probabilities which attach to each taken separately into something not far from certainty as to their collective result.<p>The name itself is suggestive. It does not appear as such in any classical writer, or on any Greek or Latin inscription. Its form, however, shows that it is a contraction from Lucanus, as Apollos is from Apollonius, or Silas from Silvanus, and not, as some have thought, another form of Lucius.<span class= "note">[10]</span> This name, again in its turn, was not a common one, and we naturally ask what associations were connected with it. Its most probable etymology points to its being derived from the region of southern Italy known as Lucania. Lucas, or Lucanus, would be a natural name for a slave or freedman, having no family name as his own, who had come, or whose father had come, from that region. Assuming, for the present. St. Luke’s authorship of the Acts, we find in the supposition that this was the origin of his name an explanation of the obvious familiarity with Italian topography shown in his mention of Puteoli, Appii Forum, and the Three Taverns, in <a href="/context/acts/28-13.htm" title="And from there we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli:">Acts 28:13-15</a>. The name Lucanus, was, however, borne at this time by a writer, M. Annæus Lucanus, who stands high in the list of Latin poets, as the author of the <span class= "ital">Pharsalia,</span> an epic which takes as its subject the great struggle for power between Julius Cæsar and Pompeius. As he was born, not in Italy, but in Spain (at Corduba, the modern <span class= "ital">Cordova</span>)<span class= "ital">,</span> the name with him must have had another than a local significance. Was there any link of association connecting the two men who bore a name which was, as we have seen, far from a common one? We are here in a region of conjecture; but on the assumption that there was some such link, we have a probable explanation (1) of the favour shown to St. Luke’s friend and companion, the great Apostle of the Gentiles. by the uncle of the poet, J. Annæus Gallio, the Proconsul of Achaia (<a href="/context/acts/18-14.htm" title="And when Paul was now about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O you Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:">Acts 18:14-17</a>), and (2) of the early tradition of a friendship between St. Paul and another uncle, the Stoic philosopher, Seneca, issuing in the correspondence of fourteen letters, which, in the time of Jerome (<span class= "ital">de Vir. Illust.</span> c. 12) and Augustine (<span class= "ital">Epist.</span> cliii. 14), was read with interest, and often quoted as a fragment of Apostolic literature. The letters that are now extant under that name are, in the judgment of well nigh all critics, spurious; but the fact that a writer in the third or fourth century thought it worth while to compose such a correspondence, implies that he was able to take for granted a general belief in the friendship which it pre-supposes; and the many coincidences of thought and language between the Apostle and the Philosopher (as seen, <span class= "ital">e.g.,</span> in the “Essay on St. Paul and Seneca,” in Dr. Lightfoot’s <span class= "ital">Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians</span>) are at least striking enough to suggest, if not intercourse, at least some derivation from a common source. Seneca was, it must be remembered, officially connected with the Court of Nero during St. Paul’s imprisonment; and when the fame of the prisoner and of his doctrine was spread through the whole Prætorium (<a href="/philippians/1-13.htm" title="So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places;">Philippians 1:13</a>), and congregations of disciples were to be found even among the slaves of the Imperial household (<a href="/philippians/4-22.htm" title="All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household.">Philippians 4:22</a>), it was not likely that a man in his position should remain ignorant of the teacher whose influence was spreading so widely. If the friend and companion of the prisoner bore the same name as the nephew of the philosopher, that coincidence would help to attract attention. If, as the coincidence itself suggests, there had been any previous connection between the two, we have an hypothesis into which all the facts of the case fit in with an almost surprising symmetry. The poet Lucan, we may note, was born A.D. 39. The date of St. Luke’s birth we have no materials for fixing, but the impression left by the facts of the case is that he was about the same age as St. Paul,<span class= "note">[11]</span> and therefore older than the poet by thirty or forty years. Was the one named after the other? And does this imply a connection of the whole family with the beloved physician? This, it is obvious, would give an additional support to the superstructure of inferences already raised.<span class= "note">[12]<p>[10] It follows from this that the Evangelist cannot be identified, as some have thought, with Lucius of Cyrene, who is mentioned as prominent among the prophets and teachers at Antioch (</span><a href="/acts/13-1.htm" title="Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.">Acts 13:1</a><span class= "note">), or the Lucius who is named as a kinsman of St. Paul’s (</span><a href="/romans/16-21.htm" title="Timotheus my workfellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you.">Romans 16:21</a><span class= "note">). If that identification had been possible, the traditional fame of Cyrene for its School of Medicine (Herod. iii. 131), would have had a special interest in connection with St. Luke’s calling.<p>[11] St. Paul, <span class= "ital">e.g.,</span> never speaks of him as he does of younger disciples, like Timothy or Titus, as his “child,” or “son, in the faith.”<p>[12] ‘Lucan, as has been said above, was born at Cordova. Now, it is remarkable that when St. Paul was planning an extended journey with St. Luke as his companion, Spain, and not Rome, was to be its ultimate goal (</span><a href="/romans/15-28.htm" title="When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.">Romans 15:28</a><span class= "note">). That country had a large element of Jews in its population in the third and fourth centuries, and it is probable that they had settled there, as in Cyrene and Carthage, from an early period of the Dispersion. Cordova, as one of the chief seats of Roman culture, was certain to attract them, and we find it at a later period one of the chief seats of mediæval Rabbinism, with a fame already traditional. Another point of some interest still remains to be noticed. The poet was a fellow-pupil with Persius, under one of the great Stoic teachers of the time, L. Annæus Cornutus (the name is that of the <span class= "ital">gens</span> of Seneca and Gallio), and Persius, as we have seen (Note on Mark 6), had at least some points of contact with the Herods.</span><p>The incidental mention of St. Luke’s name in <a href="/colossians/4-14.htm" title=" Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.">Colossians 4:14</a>, places us on more solid ground. He is emphatically distinguished from “those of the circumcision”—Mark and others who are named in <a href="/context/colossians/4-10.htm" title=" Aristarchus my fellow prisoner salutes you, and Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas, (touching whom you received commandments: if he come to you, receive him;)">Colossians 4:10-11</a>. He was, <span class= "ital">i.e.,</span> a Gentile by birth, and this fact, it is obvious, is important on all the questions affecting his relations with the Apostle of the Gentiles, and the aim and characteristic features of his writings.<p>The fact that he was “a physician” suggests other inferences. That profession in the early days of the Empire was filled almost exclusively by freedmen, or the sons of freedmen (the <span class= "ital">Libertini</span> of <a href="/acts/6-9.htm" title="Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen.">Acts 6:9</a>), who, shut out more or less completely from military or official life, were led to devote themselves to science, or art, or literature. The well-known list of the members of the household of the Empress Livia, the wife of Augustus, compiled from the <span class= "ital">Columbarium,</span><span class= "note">[13]</span> a sepulchre which was opened at Rome in A.D. 1726, presents many examples of names with the word <span class= "ital">medicus</span> attached to them; among them may be noted that of Tyrannus, the name which appears in <a href="/acts/19-9.htm" title="But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spoke evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus.">Acts 19:9</a> as the owner of the “school” or lecture-room at Ephesus, in which St. Paul received his disciples. Where, we ask, was one who made choice of that profession likely to seek for his education? The answer to that question leads us into yet a new region of coincidences. On the one hand, the town of Crotona, in Southern Italy, had a reputation of some centuries standing for its School of Medicine (Herod. iii. 131), and this would fall in with the hypothesis of the Evangelist’s Lucanian origin. On the other, of all the medical schools of the time, there were none that stood higher in reputation than that of Tarsus, and few that stood so high. The leading physicians of the time, Aretæus the Cappadocian, Dioscorides of Anazarba in Cilicia, Athenæus of the Cilician Attaleia, could hardly have received their training elsewhere. Within a few miles of Tarsus, at Ægæ, on the coast of Cilicia, was a great Temple of Æsculapius, which, as resorted to by sick persons from all countries who came to consult the priests of the Temple (the Asclepiadæ, <span class= "ital">i.e.,</span> the guild or brotherhood of Æsculapius), offered the nearest analogue to a modern hospital, as a place for observation and practice. If Tarsus were thus the place, or one of the places, to which Luke went to gain his professional knowledge and experience, we have again what explains many of the facts, more or less perplexing, in the Apostolic history. There is no record of St. Paul’s first meeting with him, or of his conversion to the faith. If, with almost all interpreters of repute, we see in the sudden use of the first person plural in <a href="/acts/16-10.htm" title="And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel to them.">Acts 16:10</a> a proof of companionship then beginning between the writer of the book and the Apostle whose labours he narrates, the naturalness with which it comes in must be admitted as <span class= "ital">primâ facie</span> evidence of previous acquaintance. But there were other names at that time connected with Tarsus which have an interest for the Christian student. All that we read in the Acts suggests the thought that the Cypriot Jew, the Levite, Joses Barnabas, the Son of Consolation, received his education at Tarsus, and there learnt to love and honour the tent-maker Rabbi, for the reality of whose conversion he was the first to vouch (<a href="/acts/9-27.htm" title="But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.">Acts 9:27</a>), to whom he turned when his work pressed hard on him, as the fellow-labourer most like-minded with himself (<a href="/acts/11-25.htm" title="Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul:">Acts 11:25</a>), the separation from whom, when they parted, brought with it a bitterness which is hardly intelligible, except on the assumption of a previous affection that was now wounded to the quick (<a href="/acts/15-39.htm" title="And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed to Cyprus;">Acts 15:39</a>). Not altogether, again, without some points of contact with St. Luke, is the fact that the great geographer Strabo, a native of Cappadocia, whose full description of Tarsus (<span class= "ital">Geogr.</span> xiii. p. 627) is obviously based upon personal observation, may have visited that city about A.D. 17, and on the supposition, either of actual contact, or of the attention called to his writings among the students of what we may well call the University of Tarsus, we may legitimately trace his influence as working indirectly in the uniform accuracy of all the incidental geographical notices that occur in St. Luke’s Gospel and in the Acts. (See the Notes on those books.) At Tarsus also, at or about the same period, was to be seen another conspicuous character of the time, the great wonder-working impostor, Apollonius of Tyana, whose life was afterwards published as a counterfeit and rival parallel to that of Christ, and in whom St. Luke might have seen the great prototype of all the “workers with curious arts,” with their books of charms and incantations, whom he describes as yielding to the mightier power of St. Paul (<a href="/context/acts/19-11.htm" title="And God worked special miracles by the hands of Paul:">Acts 19:11-12</a>).<p><span class= "note">[13] The word means literally a “dove-cote,” and was applied to the sepulchre as consisting mainly of what we should call “pigeon-holes,” in each of which stood a small bin containing the ashes of the dead.</span><p>St. Luke’s character as a physician may be considered from three distinct points of view, each of which has a special interest of its own. (1) As influencing his style and language; (2) as affecting his personal relations with St. Paul; and (3) as giving him opportunities for acquiring the knowledge which we find in the books commonly ascribed to him. Each of these call for a special, though brief, notice.<p>(1) The differences of style in St. Luke’s Gospel as compared with the two that precede it, the proofs of a higher culture, the more rhythmical structure of his sentences, which are traceable even by the merely English reader, in such passages, <span class= "ital">e.g.,</span> as <a href="/context/luke/1-1.htm" title="For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,">Luke 1:1-4</a>, are in the Greek original conspicuous throughout, the only exceptions being the portions of his Gospel which, like Luke 1, from <a href="/luke/1-5.htm" title="THERE was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.">Luke 1:5</a>, and Luke 2, are apparently translations from a lost Hebrew or Aramaic document. The use of technical phraseology is, in like manner, traceable in his mention of the “fevers (the word is plural in the Greek), and dysentery,” of which Publius was healed at Melita (<a href="/acts/28-8.htm" title="And it came to pass, that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him.">Acts 28:8</a>); in the “feet” (not the common <span class= "greekheb">πόδες</span><span class= "ital">, podes,</span> but the more precise <span class= "greekheb">βάσεις</span>,<span class= "ital"> baseis</span>) “and ankle bones” of <a href="/acts/3-7.htm" title="And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.">Acts 3:7</a>; in the “scales” that fell from St. Paul’s eyes (<a href="/acts/9-18.htm" title="And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight immediately, and arose, and was baptized.">Acts 9:18</a>); in the “trance,” or, more literally, <span class= "ital">ecstasy,</span> connected with St. Peter’s vision (<a href="/context/acts/10-9.htm" title="On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew near to the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:">Acts 10:9-10</a>), as brought on by the Apostle’s exposure to the noontide sun after long-continued fasting; in the special adjective used for “eaten of worms,” in <a href="/acts/12-23.htm" title="And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.">Acts 12:23</a>; in his notice of the “virtue,” or healing power, that flowed forth from our Lord’s body (<a href="/luke/8-46.htm" title="And Jesus said, Somebody has touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.">Luke 8:46</a>); and of the sweat in “clots,” or drops like as of blood, that issued from it in the Agony of Gethsemane (<a href="/luke/22-44.htm" title="And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.">Luke 22:44</a>).<p>(2) It is noticeable in tracing the connection of St. Paul and St. Luke, that on each occasion when the one joins the other for a time, it is after the Apostle had suffered in a more than common degree from the bodily infirmities that oppressed him. When they met at Troas, it was after he had been detained in Galatia by “the infirmity of his flesh” (<a href="/galatians/4-13.htm" title="You know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you at the first.">Galatians 4:13</a>). When the one joins the other in the voyage to Jerusalem, it is after St. Paul had had “the sentence of death” in himself, had been “dying daily,” had been “delivered from so great a death,” had been carrying about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus (<a href="/2_corinthians/1-9.htm" title="But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raises the dead:">2Corinthians 1:9</a>; <a href="/context/2_corinthians/4-10.htm" title="Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.">2Corinthians 4:10-12</a>; <a href="/2_corinthians/4-16.htm" title="For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.">2Corinthians 4:16</a>). From that time St. Luke seems scarcely to have left his friend, except, perhaps, for short intervals; and the way in which St. Paul speaks of him as <span class= "ital">“</span>the beloved physician,” makes it almost a matter of certainty that it was by his ministrations as a physician that he had made himself “beloved.” The constant companionship of one with St. Luke’s knowledge and special culture was sure, sooner or later, to affect St. Paul’s thoughts and language, and traces of this influence are to be found in many of the Epistles. Most of these are naturally more manifest in the Greek than in the English words; but we may note as examples the frequent use of the ideal of “health “as the standard of life and teaching, as seen in the phrases “sound,” or better, <span class= "ital">healthy, “</span>doctrine” (<span class= "greekheb">υ</span>̔<span class= "greekheb">γιαινου</span>́<span class= "greekheb">ση</span>ͅ) of <a href="/1_timothy/1-10.htm" title="For fornicators, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for enslavers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;">1Timothy 1:10</a>; <a href="/1_timothy/6-3.htm" title="If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;">1Timothy 6:3</a>, <a href="/2_timothy/1-13.htm" title="Hold fast the form of sound words, which you have heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.">2Timothy 1:13</a>; and in the “doting,” or better, <span class= "ital">diseased</span> of <a href="/1_timothy/6-4.htm" title="He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof comes envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,">1Timothy 6:4</a>; in the spread of error being like that of a gangrene or cancer (<a href="/2_timothy/2-17.htm" title="And their word will eat as does a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;">2Timothy 2:17</a>); in the word for “puffed up,” which implies the delirium of a fever of the typhus type (<span class= "greekheb">τυφωθει</span>̀<span class= "greekheb">ς</span><span class= "ital">, typhôtheis</span>) in <a href="/1_timothy/3-6.htm" title="Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.">1Timothy 3:6</a>; <a href="/1_timothy/6-4.htm" title="He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof comes envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,">1Timothy 6:4</a>, <a href="/2_timothy/3-4.htm" title="Traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;">2Timothy 3:4</a>; in the conscience seared, or better, <span class= "ital">cauterised,</span> till it has become callous (<a href="/1_timothy/4-2.htm" title="Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;">1Timothy 4:2</a>); in the malady of “itching ears” (<a href="/2_timothy/4-3.htm" title="For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;">2Timothy 4:3</a>); in the “bodily exercise” or training (literally, the training of the gymnasium) that profiteth little (<a href="/1_timothy/4-8.htm" title="For bodily exercise profits little: but godliness is profitable to all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.">1Timothy 4:8</a>); in the precept which enjoined on Timothy, as a means of keeping his mind in a state of equilibrium and purity, uncontaminated by the evil with which his office brought him into contact, to “drink no longer water” only, but “to use a little wine, for his stomach’s sake and his often infirmities” (<a href="/1_timothy/5-23.htm" title="Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your often infirmities.">1Timothy 5:23</a>); in the judgment that a reckless disregard of the body is of no value as a remedy against what is technically called <span class= "ital">fulness</span> (not “satisfying”) of the flesh (<a href="/colossians/2-23.htm" title=" Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body: not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.">Colossians 2:23</a>). These words are, in almost all cases, characteristic of the Greek of Hippocrates and other medical writers, and the same may be said of the Greek words used by St. Paul for “dung” (<span class= "greekheb">σκυ</span>́<span class= "greekheb">βαλα</span><span class= "ital">—skyhala,</span> <a href="/philippians/3-8.htm" title="Yes doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,">Philippians 3:8</a>), for “occasion” (<span class= "greekheb">α</span>̓<span class= "greekheb">φορμη</span>̀<span class= "greekheb">ν</span>—<span class= "ital">aphormè,</span> <a href="/1_timothy/5-14.htm" title="I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.">1Timothy 5:14</a>), for “gazing” or “looking earnestly” (<span class= "greekheb">ἀτενιζων</span><span class= "ital">,</span> <a href="/context/2_corinthians/3-7.htm" title="But if the ministration of death, written and engraved in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:">2Corinthians 3:7-13</a> : the word is used twelve times by St. Luke, and by him only), for “charge” (<a href="/1_timothy/1-3.htm" title="As I sought you to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that you might charge some that they teach no other doctrine,">1Timothy 1:3</a>; <a href="/1_timothy/1-18.htm" title="This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on you, that you by them might war a good warfare;">1Timothy 1:18</a>), for “contention” (<span class= "ital">i.e., paroxysm</span>) in <a href="/acts/15-39.htm" title="And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed to Cyprus;">Acts 15:39</a>.<p>(3) It is obvious that in the East, then as now, the calling of a physician was a passport to many social regions into which it was otherwise difficult to find access. A physician of experience arriving in this or that city, would be likely to become acquainted, not with the poor only, but with men of official rank and women of the higher class. How far, and in what special way this helped St. Luke to obtain the information which he wanted for his Gospel, will call for inquiry further on. Here it will be enough to note that such channels of information were sure to be opened to him.<p>If, on the data that have been given, it is reasonable to suppose that St. Paul and St. Luke had met at Tarsus, it is almost a matter of certainty that their friendship was continued at Antioch. Here the tradition, given by Eusebius (<span class= "ital">Hist. iii.</span> 4), that St. Luke was a resident in the latter city, agrees with the natural inference from the prominence which he gives to the Christian society there as the mother of all the Gentile churches (<a href="/context/acts/11-19.htm" title="Now they which were scattered abroad on the persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but to the Jews only.">Acts 11:19-30</a>), from his knowledge of the names of its pastors and teachers (<a href="/context/acts/13-1.htm" title="Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.">Acts 13:1-3</a>), from the fulness with which he relates the early stages of the great controversy with the Judaisers (<a href="/context/acts/15-1.htm" title="And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brothers, and said, Except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved.">Acts 15:1-3</a>; <a href="/context/acts/15-22.htm" title="Then pleased it the apostles and elders with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; namely, Judas surnamed Barsabas and Silas, chief men among the brothers:">Acts 15:22-35</a>). From Antioch. however, accepting as before the natural conclusion from the change of pronouns, he must have gone to Troas (<a href="/acts/16-10.htm" title="And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel to them.">Acts 16:10</a>), and probably begun or continued there his labours in the gospel, which in a later time won St. Paul’s glowing praise (<a href="/2_corinthians/8-18.htm" title="And we have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches;">2Corinthians 8:18</a>).<span class= "note">[14]</span> Thence he went with St. Paul to Philippi, and, as far as we can judge, remained there during the whole period of the Apostle’s work at Corinth and Ephesus, the friend and guide of Lydia and Euodias, and Syntyche and other women who laboured with him in the gospel (<a href="/context/philippians/4-2.htm" title="I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord.">Philippians 4:2-3</a>), until after a visit to Corinth (<a href="/2_corinthians/8-18.htm" title="And we have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches;">2Corinthians 8:18</a>), he joined him again, and the Apostle returned from his winter sojourn in that city at Philippi, was with him once more at Troas, sailed with him to Miletus, and so to Tyre and Ptolemais and Cæsarea, went up with him to Jerusalem, and remained with him or near him during his two years’ imprisonment under Felix or Festus (Acts 20-26). Then came the voyage to Italy, narrated with the graphic precision of an eye-witness, and throughout in the first person plural (<a href="/context/acts/27-1.htm" title="And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners to one named Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band.">Acts 27:1-44</a>); then the shipwreck at Melita, and the arrival in Italy, and the two years (broken, perhaps, if we assume Luke, as seems probable, to be the “true yoke-fellow” of <a href="/philippians/4-3.htm" title="And I entreat you also, true yoke fellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers, whose names are in the book of life.">Philippians 4:3</a>, by a short visit to Philippi) of the first imprisonment at Rome (<a href="/colossians/4-14.htm" title=" Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.">Colossians 4:14</a>; <a href="/philemon/1-24.htm" title="Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow laborers.">Philemon 1:24</a>). Then came the last unrecorded missionary journey of St. Paul in Spain, Asia, Macedonia, Achaia,<span class= "note">[15]</span> during which St. Luke probably continued with him; and then we find him, the last clear glimpse we get, still at the side of his friend and master, when all others were proving time-serving and faithless (<a href="/2_timothy/4-10.htm" title="For Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed to Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.">2Timothy 4:10</a>). Beyond this we have nothing definite. Tradition, not earlier than the fourth century (Epiphanius, <span class= "ital">Hœr,</span> 51), says that he preached in Italy, Gaul, Dalmatia, and Macedonia; that he was a painter as well as physician, and was specially famous for seven portraits of the Virgin; that he lived to the age of eighty-four; that he was crucified at Elæa on an olive tree, in the Peloponnesus; or, according to another story, died a natural death in Bithynia. His bones are related to have been brought to Constantinople from Patras in Achaia by order of the Emperor Constantine, and to have been deposited in the Church of the Apostles.<p><span class= "note">[14] There are, it is believed, no sufficient reasons for rejecting the reference of this passage to St. Luke. It is not meant that St. Paul speaks of his gospel as a book, but the physician was an Evangelist in the primitive as well as the later sense of the word, and no one was so likely to have been chosen by St. Paul to be one of the representatives of the Macedonian churches.<p>[15] The route of the Apostle may be inferred partly from his plans (</span><a href="/philippians/2-24.htm" title="But I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly.">Philippians 2:24</a><span class= "note">; </span><a href="/philemon/1-22.htm" title="But with prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given to you.">Philemon 1:22</a><span class= "note">), partly from the reference to Asia in </span><a href="/2_timothy/1-15.htm" title="This you know, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes.">2Timothy 1:15</a><span class= "note">, Macedonia (</span><a href="/1_timothy/1-3.htm" title="As I sought you to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that you might charge some that they teach no other doctrine,">1Timothy 1:3</a><span class= "note">), Corinth (</span><a href="/2_timothy/4-20.htm" title="Erastus stayed at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.">2Timothy 4:20</a><span class= "note">). I have ventured to suggest Spain as also probable. It is hardly likely that St. Paul would have abandoned the strong desire which he expresses in </span><a href="/romans/15-24.htm" title="Whenever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.">Romans 15:24</a><span class= "note">. And if there was, as has been shown to be probable, a personal connection between Luke and the family of Cordova, there would be fresh motives for his going there. Clement of Rome, it may be mentioned, speaks of him as having travelled to the furthest boundary of the West (<span class= "ital">Epist. ad Cor.</span> C. 5), a phrase which would hardly have been used by a Roman writer of Rome itself. The tradition as to an evangelising journey into Spain became, as the years passed on, more and more definite, and was accepted by Epiphanius, Chrysostom. Jerome, and Theodoret.</span><p><span class= "bld">II. The Authorship of the Gospel.</span>—The two earliest witnesses to the existence of a Gospel recognised as written by St. Luke, are (1) Irenæus, and (2) the Muratorian Fragment. (See <span class= "ital">General Introduction on the Canon of the New Testament.</span>) The former, dwelling on the necessity of there being neither more nor less than four Gospels, as there are four elements, four cardinal points, and the like, acknowledges St. Luke’s as one of the four. Pressing the analogy of the four symbolic figures of the Cherubim, he compares the Gospel which he names as Luke’s to the calf, as representing the priestly, sacrificial side of our Lord’s work. “As such,” he says, “it began with Zacharias burning incense in the Temple” (<span class= "ital">Adv. Hœr.</span> ii.). In another passage he speaks of “Luke, the companion of Paul,” as having “written in a book the gospel which the latter preached” (<span class= "ital">Adv. Hœr.</span> iii. 1). The <span class= "ital">Muratorian Fragment,</span> which has suffered the loss of its first sentences, and so fails to give direct evidence as to St. Matthew and St. Mark, begins accordingly with St. Luke, mentioning, however, his Gospel as the third. What follows is interesting, though being, like the whole fragment, in the language of an obviously illiterate scribe, and presumably a translation from a Greek original, it is at once corrupt and obscure. The nearest approach to an intelligible rendering would be as follows:—“Luke the physician, after the ascension of Christ, when St. Paul had chosen him, as being zealous of what was just and right (<span class= "ital">juris studiosus</span>)<span class= "ital">,</span> wrote in his own name, and as it seemed good to him (<span class= "ital">ex opinione,</span> apparently with an implied reference to <a href="/luke/1-2.htm" title="Even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;">Luke 1:2</a>). Yet he himself did not see the Lord in the flesh, and did what he did as he could best attain to it, and so he began his narrative from the birth of John.” The passage is every way important, as showing (1) the early identification of the writer of the third Gospel with Luke the physician; (2) the absence of any early tradition that he was one of the Seventy; (3) the fact that the first two chapters were part of the Gospel as known to the writer of the Fragment, or of the still older document which he translated. Papias, as far as the fragments of his writings that remain show, who names St. Matthew and St. Mark, is silent as to St. Luke. Justin, who does not name the writer of any Gospel, speaks of the “records of the Apostles, which are called Gospels,” as having been written either by Apostles themselves, or by those who followed them closely (using the same Greek word here as St. Luke uses in <a href="/luke/1-2.htm" title="Even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;">Luke 1:2</a>), and cites in immediate connection with this the fact of the sweat that was as great drops of blood (<span class= "ital">Dial. 100 Tryph.</span> c. 22). It seems all but certain from this that he had read the narrative of <a href="/luke/22-44.htm" title="And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.">Luke 22:44</a> as we have it, and that he ascribed the authorship of it to a companion of the Apostles. So Tertullian, who recognises four Gospels, and four only, speaks of “John and Matthew as Apostles, of Luke and Mark as helpers of the Apostles (<span class= "ital">Cont. Marc.</span> iv. 2); and Origen (in Euseb. <span class= "ital">Hist. Eccles.</span> vi. 25) speaks of the Gospel according to St. Luke as being “cited and approved by Paul,” referring apparently to the expression “according to my Gospel” (<a href="/romans/2-16.htm" title="In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.">Romans 2:16</a>; <a href="/romans/16-25.htm" title="Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,">Romans 16:25</a>; <a href="/2_timothy/1-8.htm" title="Be not you therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be you partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;">2Timothy 1:8</a>), and to “the brother whose praise is in the Gospel,” in <a href="/context/2_corinthians/8-18.htm" title="And we have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches;">2Corinthians 8:18-19</a>.<p><span class= "bld">III. The sources of the Gospel.</span>—The question, Where did the writer of this Gospel collect his information, is obviously one of special interest. In St. Matthew we have, accepting the traditional authorship, personal recollection as a groundwork, helped by the oral or written teaching previously current in the Church. In St. Mark (see <span class= "ital">Introduction</span> to that Gospel), We have substantially the same oral or written teaching, modified by the personal recollections of St. Peter. St. Luke, on the other hand, disclaims the character of an eye-witness (<a href="/luke/1-2.htm" title="Even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;">Luke 1:2</a>), and confesses that he is only a compiler, claiming simply the credit of having done his best to verify the facts which he narrates. St. Paul, to whom he specially devoted himself, was, as far as personal knowledge went, in the same position as himself. Where, then, taking the facts of St. Luke’s life, as given above, was it probable that he found his materials?<p>(1) At Antioch, if not before, the Evangelist would be likely to come in contact with not a few who had been “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.” Those who were scattered after the persecution that began with the death of Stephen (<a href="/acts/11-19.htm" title="Now they which were scattered abroad on the persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but to the Jews only.">Acts 11:19</a>), and the prophets who came from Jerusalem with Agabus (<a href="/acts/11-28.htm" title="And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.">Acts 11:28</a>), the latter probably forming part of the company of the Seventy (see Note on <a href="/luke/10-1.htm" title="After these things the LORD appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, where he himself would come.">Luke 10:1</a>), must have included some, at least, of persons so qualified. There, too, he must have met with Manaen, the foster-brother of the Tetrarch, and may have derived from him much that he narrates as to the ministry of the Baptist (<a href="/context/luke/3-1.htm" title="Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,">Luke 3:1-20</a>), our Lord’s testimony to him (<a href="/context/luke/7-18.htm" title="And the disciples of John showed him of all these things.">Luke 7:18-34</a>), the relation between Herod and Pilate, and the part which the former took in the history of the Crucifixion (<a href="/context/luke/23-5.htm" title="And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.">Luke 23:5-12</a>), the estimate which our Lord had passed upon his character (<a href="/luke/13-32.htm" title="And he said to them, Go you, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.">Luke 13:32</a>). That acquaintance served probably, in the nature of things, to introduce him to a knowledge of the other members of the Herodian family, of whom we learn so much from him, and, of the Evangelists, from him only (<a href="/luke/3-1.htm" title="Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,">Luke 3:1</a>; <a href="/context/acts/12-1.htm" title="Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.">Acts 12:1-25</a>; <a href="/acts/25-13.htm" title="And after certain days king Agrippa and Bernice came to Caesarea to salute Festus.">Acts 25:13</a>; <a href="/acts/26-32.htm" title="Then said Agrippa to Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed to Caesar.">Acts 26:32</a>).<p>(2) During the years of St. Luke’s work at Troas and Philippi, there were, we may presume, but few such opportunities; but when he accompanied St. Paul on his last journey to Jerusalem, they must have been multiplied indefinitely. Mnason of Cyprus, the old disciple (a disciple <span class= "ital">from the beginning,</span> as the word signifies, <a href="/acts/21-16.htm" title="There went with us also certain of the disciples of Caesarea, and brought with them one Mnason of Cyprus, an old disciple, with whom we should lodge.">Acts 21:16</a>), must have had much to tell him. During St. Paul’s stay at Cæsarea there was ample time for him to become acquainted with the current oral, or, as his own words imply, written teaching of the churches of Palestine, which formed the groundwork of what is common to him and the first two Gospels, as well as with the many facts that connect themselves with that city in the narrative of the Acts. We cannot, however, think of a man of St. Luke’s culture bent upon writing a history, because he was not satisfied with the “many” fragmentary records that he found already in circulation, resting at Cæsarea during the two years of St. Paul’s imprisonment without pushing his inquiries further. We may think of him accordingly as journeying in regions where he knew our Lord had worked, most of which lay within two or three days’ easy journey, while yet there was little record of His ministry there, and so collecting such facts as the raising of the widow’s son at Nain (<a href="/context/luke/7-11.htm" title="And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.">Luke 7:11-17</a>), the appearance of the risen Lord to the disciples at Emmaus (<a href="/context/luke/24-13.htm" title="And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about three score furlongs.">Luke 24:13-35</a>), the full record, peculiar to this Gospel, of His ministry and teaching in Peræa.<p>(3) The profession of St. Luke as a physician, probably also the character that he had acquired as the guide and adviser of the sisterhood at Philippi (see Notes on that Epistle), would naturally give him access to a whole circle of eye-witnesses who were not so likely to come within the range of St. Matthew and St. Mark. He alone mentions the company of devout women who followed Jesus during part, at least, of His ministry (<a href="/context/luke/8-2.htm" title="And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,">Luke 8:2-3</a>), and as he gives the names of the chief members of the company, it is natural to infer that he was personally acquainted with them. So far as they were sharers in the feelings of other women, we may believe, with hardly the shadow of a doubt, that they would dwell especially on all that connected itself with the childhood and youth of the Lord whom they had loved with such devout tenderness, that the bereaved mother whom St. John had taken to his own home (<a href="/john/19-27.htm" title="Then said he to the disciple, Behold your mother! And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.">John 19:27</a>)—sometimes, perhaps, in Galilee, sometimes in Jerusalem—would be the centre of their reverential love. From them, therefore, as those who would be sure to treasure up such a record, St. Luke may well have derived the narrative—obviously a translation from the Hebrew or Aramaic of Palestine—which forms the introduction to his Gospel (Luke 1, 2), and which is distinct in character and style from the rest of his Gospel. But informants such as these would be sure to treasure up also the special instances of our Lord’s tenderness and sympathy for women like themselves, and it is accordingly not more than a legitimate inference from the facts of human nature to trace to them such narratives as that of the woman that was a sinner (<a href="/context/luke/7-36.htm" title="And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat.">Luke 7:36-50</a>), of the contrasted characters of the two sisters at Bethany (<a href="/context/luke/10-38.htm" title="Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.">Luke 10:38-42</a>), of the woman who cried out, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee . . .” (<a href="/luke/11-27.htm" title="And it came to pass, as he spoke these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said to him, Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts which you have sucked.">Luke 11:27</a>),<span class= "note">[16]</span> of the daughters of Jerusalem who met their Lord on His way to Calvary (<a href="/context/luke/23-27.htm" title="And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.">Luke 23:27-29</a>), of those, again, who had come up from Galilee and who stood afar off beholding His death upon the cross (<a href="/luke/23-49.htm" title="And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.">Luke 23:49</a>), and of their buying spices and ointment for His entombment (<a href="/luke/23-56.htm" title="And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.">Luke 23:56</a>).<p><span class= "note">[16] It will be noted that our Lord’s words (</span><a href="/luke/23-29.htm" title="For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts which never gave suck.">Luke 23:29</a><span class= "note">), “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck,” seem intended to remind those who heard them of the far-different benediction which one of them had once uttered.</span><p>On the whole, then, everything tends to the belief that St. Luke’s statement that he had carefully traced to their sources, as far as he could, the facts which he narrates, was no idle boast; that he had many and ample opportunities for doing so; and that he did this, as we have seen above, with the culture and discernment which his previous training was likely to have imparted. It is obvious, however, that coming, as he did, into the field of inquiry some thirty, or at least twenty, years or so after the events, many of the facts and sayings would reach him in a comparatively isolated form; and though there is an obvious and earnest endeavour to relate them, as he says, “in order,” it might not always be easy to ascertain what that order had actually been. And this is, in part at least, the probable explanation of the seeming dislocation of facts which we find on comparing his Gospel with those of St. Matthew and St. Mark. (See Notes on <a href="/matthew/8-1.htm" title="When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.">Matthew 8:1</a>; <a href="/matthew/9-1.htm" title="And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.">Matthew 9:1</a>.)<p><span class= "bld">IV. The first readers of the Gospel.</span>—St. Luke’s record differs in a very marked way from the other three in being addressed, or, as we should say, dedicated, to an individual. Who and what Theophilus was, we have but few data for conjecturing. The epithet “most excellent”—the same word as that used by Tertullus in addressing Felix (<a href="/acts/24-3.htm" title="We accept it always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness.">Acts 24:3</a>)—implies social or official position of some dignity. The absence of that epithet in the dedication of the Acts indicates, perhaps, that the Evangelist had then come to be on terms of greater familiarity with him. The reference to Italian localities of minor importance, as places familiar to the reader as well as writer, in <a href="/context/acts/28-12.htm" title="And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days.">Acts 28:12-14</a>, suggests the conclusion that he was of Latin, probably of Roman, origin; the fact that the Gospel was written for him in Greek, that he shared the culture which was then common to well nigh all educated Romans. He was a convert, accordingly, from the religion of Rome to that of Christ, though he may, of course, have passed through Judaism, as a schoolmaster leading him to Christ. The teaching which he had already received as a catechumen had embraced an outline of the facts recorded in the Gospel (<a href="/luke/1-3.htm" title="It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus,">Luke 1:3</a>), and St. Luke wrote to raise the knowledge so gained to a standard of greater completeness. The name, it may be noted, was, like Timotheus, not an uncommon one. Among St. Luke’s contemporaries, it was borne by one of the Jewish high priests, the brother-in-law of Caiaphas (Jos. <span class= "ital">Ant. </span>xviii. 4, § 3), who probably was responsible for St. Paul’s mission of persecution to Damascus, and by some official at Athens who was condemned for perjury by the Areopagus (Tacit. <span class= "ital">Ann.</span> ii. 55). Beyond this all is conjecture, or tradition which dissolves into conjecture. He is said to have been, by this or that ecclesiastical writer, an Achæan, or an Alexandrian, or an Antiochian; he has been wildly identified by some modern critics, with one or other of the two persons thus named; it has been held by others that the name (= “one who loves God”) simply designated the ideal Christian reader whom St. Luke had in view.<p>It is, however, reasonable to infer that the Gospel, though dedicated to him, was meant for the wider circle of the class of which he was the representative, <span class= "ital">i.e.,</span> in other words, that it was meant to be especially a Gospel for the educated heathen. It will be seen in what follows, that this view is confirmed by its more prominent characteristics.<p><span class= "bld">V. The characteristics of the Gospel.</span>—(1) It has been said, not without some measure of truth, that one main purpose of the Acts of the Apostles was to reconcile the two parties in the Apostolic Church which tended to arrange themselves, with more or less of open antagonism, under the names of St. Peter and St. Paul, by showing that the two Apostles were substantially of one mind; that the former had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles (<a href="/acts/10-48.htm" title="And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.">Acts 10:48</a>), and had consented to the great charter of their freedom (<a href="/acts/15-7.htm" title="And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said to them, Men and brothers, you know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.">Acts 15:7</a>); that the latter had shown his reverence for the ceremonial law by twice taking on himself, wholly or in part, the vow of a Nazarite (<a href="/acts/18-18.htm" title="And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brothers, and sailed there into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow.">Acts 18:18</a>; <a href="/acts/21-26.htm" title="Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them entered into the temple, to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them.">Acts 21:26</a>). Something of the same catholicity of purpose is to be found in the Gospel which bears St. Luke’s name. It was obviously natural that it should be so in the work of the friend of one who became as a Jew to Jews, and as a Greek to Greeks (<a href="/1_corinthians/9-20.htm" title="And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;">1Corinthians 9:20</a>). Thus we have the whole history of the first two chapters, and the genealogy in Luke 3, obviously meeting the tastes, in the first instance, of Jewish readers on the one side, and on the other the choice of narratives or teachings that specially bring out the width and universality of the love of God, the breaking down of the barriers of Jewish exclusiveness, the reference to the widow of Sarepta and Naaman the Syrian (<a href="/context/luke/4-26.htm" title="But to none of them was Elias sent, save to Sarepta, a city of Sidon, to a woman that was a widow.">Luke 4:26-27</a>), the mission of the Seventy as indicating the universality of the kingdom (<a href="/luke/10-1.htm" title="After these things the LORD appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, where he himself would come.">Luke 10:1</a>), the pardon of the penitent robber (<a href="/luke/23-43.htm" title="And Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, To day shall you be with me in paradise.">Luke 23:43</a>), the parables of the Good Samaritan (<a href="/context/luke/10-30.htm" title="And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.">Luke 10:30-37</a>), of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15); midway between the two, the story of Zacchæus, the publican, treated as a heathen, and yet recognised as a son of Abraham (<a href="/luke/19-9.htm" title="And Jesus said to him, This day is salvation come to this house, as much as he also is a son of Abraham.">Luke 19:9</a>).<p>(2) In the Acts, again, especially in the earlier chapters, we note a manifest tendency in the writer to dwell on all acts of self-denial, and on the lavish generosity which made the life of the Apostolic Church the realisation, in part at least, of an ideal communism (<a href="/context/acts/2-44.htm" title="And all that believed were together, and had all things common;">Acts 2:44-45</a>; <a href="/acts/4-32.htm" title="And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.">Acts 4:32</a>; <a href="/acts/4-37.htm" title="Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.">Acts 4:37</a>; <a href="/acts/6-1.htm" title="And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.">Acts 6:1</a>; <a href="/acts/9-36.htm" title="Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and giving of alms which she did.">Acts 9:36</a>). So in the Gospel we recognise, over and above what he has in common with others, a principle of selection, leading him to dwell on all parts of our Lord’s teaching that pointed in the same direction. The parables of the Rich Fool (<a href="/context/luke/12-16.htm" title="And he spoke a parable to them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:">Luke 12:16-21</a>), of the Rich Man and Lazarus (<a href="/context/luke/16-19.htm" title="There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:">Luke 16:19-31</a>), of the Unjust Steward, with its direct and immediate application (<a href="/context/luke/16-1.htm" title="And he said also to his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused to him that he had wasted his goods.">Luke 16:1-14</a>); the counsel to the Pharisees to “give alms,” and so to find a more than ceremonial purity (<a href="/luke/11-41.htm" title="But rather give alms of such things as you have; and, behold, all things are clean to you.">Luke 11:41</a>); to His disciples to sell what they have and to seek for treasures in heaven (<a href="/luke/12-33.htm" title="Sell that you have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that fails not, where no thief approaches, neither moth corrupts.">Luke 12:33</a>); the beatitudes that fall on the poor and the hungry (<a href="/context/luke/6-20.htm" title="And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be you poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.">Luke 6:20-21</a>), are all instances of his desire to impress this ideal of an unselfish life upon the minds of his readers. Even in his account of the Baptist’s teaching, we find him supplying what neither St. Matthew nor St. Mark had given—the counsel which John gave to the people—“He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none” (<a href="/luke/3-11.htm" title="He answers and said to them, He that has two coats, let him impart to him that has none; and he that has meat, let him do likewise.">Luke 3:11</a>). In this also we may recognise the work of one who was like-minded with St. Paul. He, too, laboured with his own hands that he might minister to the necessities of others (<a href="/acts/20-34.htm" title="Yes, you yourselves know, that these hands have ministered to my necessities, and to them that were with me.">Acts 20:34</a>), and loved to dwell on the pattern which Christ had set when, “being rich, He for our sakes became poor” (<a href="/2_corinthians/8-9.htm" title="For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich.">2Corinthians 8:9</a>), and praised those whose deep poverty had abounded to the riches of their liberality (<a href="/2_corinthians/8-2.htm" title="How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded to the riches of their liberality.">2Corinthians 8:2</a>). He, too, had learnt the lesson that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth (<a href="/luke/12-15.htm" title="And he said to them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.">Luke 12:15</a>), and had been initiated into the mystery of knowing how, with an equal mind, to be full and to be hungry, to abound and to suffer need. (See Note on <a href="/philippians/4-12.htm" title="I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.">Philippians 4:12</a>.) He, too, warns men against the deceitfulness of riches, and the hurtful lusts springing from them that plunge men in the abyss of destruction (<a href="/1_timothy/6-9.htm" title="But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.">1Timothy 6:9</a>; <a href="/1_timothy/6-17.htm" title="Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy;">1Timothy 6:17</a>).<p>Lastly, we cannot fail to note, as we read his Gospel, the special stress which he, far more than St. Matthew or St. Mark, lays upon the prayers of the Christ. It is from him we learn that it was as Jesus was “praying” at His baptism that the heavens were opened (<a href="/luke/3-21.htm" title="Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,">Luke 3:21</a>); that it was while He was praying that the fashion of His countenance was altered, and there came on Him the glory of the Transfiguration (<a href="/luke/9-29.htm" title="And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.">Luke 9:29</a>); that He was “raying” when the disciples came and asked Him to teach them to pray (<a href="/luke/11-1.htm" title="And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.">Luke 11:1</a>); that He had prayed for Peter that his faith might not fail (<a href="/luke/22-32.htm" title="But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not: and when you are converted, strengthen your brothers.">Luke 22:32</a>). In the life of prayer, no less than in that of a self-chosen poverty, His was the pattern-life which His disciples were—each in his measure and according to his power—to endeavour to reproduce.<p><span class= "bld">VI. Relations to St. Matthew and St. Mark.</span>—It would be a fair summary of the account of the Gospel of St. Luke thus given, to say that it is in its universality, its tenderness, its spirit of self-sacrifice, pre-eminently the GOSPEL OF THE SAINTLY LIFE, presenting to us that aspect of our Lord’s ministry in which He appears as the great Example, no less than the great Teacher. In other words, since He is represented as at once holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners (<a href="/hebrews/7-26.htm" title="For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;">Hebrews 7:26</a>), and as able to have compassion on their infirmities (<a href="/hebrews/4-15.htm" title="For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.">Hebrews 4:15</a>), it is the Gospel of the Son of Man as the great High Priest of humanity in the human phase of that priesthood. It follows with a marvellous fitness upon the Gospel of St. Matthew, that had brought before us the portraiture of the true King and the true Scribe—upon that of St. Mark, in which we have seen the lineaments of the true Servant of the Lord. It prepares the way for that of St. John, which presents the Incarnate Word as manifesting His Eternal Priesthood in its sacrificial and mediatorial aspects. In its pervading tone and spirit, it is, as we have seen, essentially Pauline. In its language and style, however, it presents not a few affinities with an Epistle, the Pauline authorship of which is at least questionable, and which not a few have seen reason to look upon as the work of Apollos—the Epistle to the Hebrews. On this ground chiefly many critics, beginning with Clement of Alexandria (about A.D. 200), a man of wide and varied culture, have held that Epistle to have been the work of St. Luke, elaborating and polishing the thoughts of St. Paul (Euseb. <span class= "ital">Hist.</span> vi. 14). It has, he says, speaking as a critic of style, “the same complexion “as the Acts. Other considerations, it is believed, outweigh the arguments based on that fact; but the resemblance is sufficient to indicate that there were some affinities connecting the two writers, and the most natural is that which supposes them both to have had an Alexandrian training, and to have formed their style upon the more rhetorical books of the later Hellenistic additions to the canon of the Old Testament, such as the Books of Maccabees as the model of history, and the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus for that of the more systematic treatment of doctrine. The points of resemblance between the Book of Wisdom and the Epistle to the Hebrews are indeed so numerous as to have suggested to the present writer the thought of identity of authorship.<span class= "note">[17]<p>[17] The facts that bear upon St. Luke’s work, as the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, are naturally reserved for the <span class= "ital">Introduction </span>to that Book.</span><p>It is, of course, obvious to remark that many of the facts referred to are found also in the other Gospels, and formed part of the current oral teaching out of which the first three Gospels grew. Admitting this, however, it is clear that the history of Apollos brought him specially within the range of those who were likely to be conversant with St. Luke’s teaching; and if we suppose him to have any written record before him, it is far more likely to have been the third Gospel than either the first or second. The two men, who were friends and companions of the same Apostle, were, at any rate, likely to have met and known each other, and if so it would not be strange that, with like character and like culture, there should be a reciprocal influence between them. Traces of that influence are to be found, it is believed, in the references in the Epistle to some of the passages which, though common to the other Gospels, are yet specially characteristic of this Gospel; to the temptations of the Son of Man as giving Him power to sympathise with sinners, though Himself without sin (<a href="/hebrews/4-15.htm" title="For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.">Hebrews 4:15</a>); to His prayers and supplications and strong crying (<a href="/context/hebrews/5-7.htm" title="Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears to him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;">Hebrews 5:7-8</a>); to His endurance of the cross, despising the shame (<a href="/hebrews/12-2.htm" title="Looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.">Hebrews 12:2</a>); His endurance also of the contradiction of sinners (<a href="/hebrews/12-3.htm" title="For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds.">Hebrews 12:3</a>); to His being the Mediator of a new covenant (<a href="/hebrews/12-24.htm" title="And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things that that of Abel.">Hebrews 12:24</a>), the great Shepherd of the sheep (<a href="/hebrews/13-20.htm" title="Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,">Hebrews 13:20</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-1.htm">Luke 1:1</a></div><div class="verse">Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,</div>(1) <span class= "bld">Forasmuch as many have taken in hand.</span>—On the general bearing of this passage on the questions connected with the authorship and plan of the Gospel, see the <span class= "ital">Introduction.</span> Here we note (1), what is visible in the English, but is yet more conspicuous in the Greek, the finished structure of the sentences as compared with the simpler openings of the other Gospels; (2) the evidence which the verse supplies of the existence of many written documents professing to give an account of the Gospel history at the time when St. Luke wrote—i.e., probably before St. Paul’s death in A.D. 65. The “many” <span class= "ital">may</span> have included St. Matthew and St. Mark, but we cannot say. There is no tone of disparagement in the way in which the writer speaks of his predecessors. He simply feels that they have not exhausted the subject, and that his inquiries have enabled him to add something.<p><span class= "bld">Of those things which are most surely believed among us.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">of the things that have been accomplished among us.</span><p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-2.htm">Luke 1:2</a></div><div class="verse">Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;</div>(2) <span class= "bld">Even as they delivered them unto us.</span>—There is something noticeable in the candour with which the writer disclaims the character of an eyewitness. The word “delivered” is the same as that used by St. Paul when he speaks of the history of the Lord’s Supper (<a href="/context/1_corinthians/11-23.htm" title="For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered to you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:">1Corinthians 11:23-25</a>) and of the Resurrection (<a href="/context/1_corinthians/15-3.htm" title="For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;">1Corinthians 15:3-7</a>), and, with its cognate noun “tradition” (<a href="/2_thessalonians/2-15.htm" title="Therefore, brothers, stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word, or our letter.">2Thessalonians 2:15</a>), would seem to have been almost a technical term for the oral teaching which at least included an outline of our Lord’s life and teaching.<p><span class= "bld">Ministers of the word.</span>—The word used is that which describes the work of an attendant, something between a “slave” and a “minister,” in the later ecclesiastical use of the term as equivalent to “deacon” or “preacher.” It is used of St. Mark in <a href="/acts/13-5.htm" title="And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews: and they had also John to their minister.">Acts 13:5</a>. On the opportunities St. Luke enjoyed for converse with such as these, see <span class= "ital">Introduction.</span> The “word” is used in its more general Pauline sense (as <span class= "ital">e.g.,</span> <a href="/1_corinthians/1-18.htm" title="For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but to us which are saved it is the power of God.">1Corinthians 1:18</a>; <a href="/1_corinthians/2-4.htm" title="And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:">1Corinthians 2:4</a>), as equivalent to the “gospel,” not in the higher personal meaning which it acquired afterwards in St. John (<a href="/1_john/2-14.htm" title="I have written to you, fathers, because you have known him that is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God stays in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.">1John 2:14</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-3.htm">Luke 1:3</a></div><div class="verse">It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,</div>(3) <span class= "bld">Having had perfect understanding of all things.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">having traced</span> (or <span class= "ital">investigated</span>)<span class= "ital"> all things from their source.</span> The verb used is one which implies following the course of events step by step. The adverb which follows exactly answers to what we call the <span class= "ital">origines</span> of any great movement. It goes further back than the actual beginning of the movement itself.<p><span class= "bld">In order.</span>—The word implies a distinct aim at chronological arrangement, but it does not necessarily follow, where the order in St. Luke varies from that of the other Gospels, that it is therefore the true order. In such matters the writer, who was avowedly a compiler, might well be at some disadvantage as compared with others.<p><span class= "bld">Most excellent Theophilus.</span>—The adjective is the same as that used of Felix by Tertullus (<a href="/acts/24-3.htm" title="We accept it always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness.">Acts 24:3</a>), and implies at least high social position, if not official rank. The name, which means “Friend of God,” might well be taken by a Christian convert at his baptism. Nothing more can be known of the person so addressed beyond the fact that he was probably a Gentile convert who had already been partially instructed in the facts of the Gospel history.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-4.htm">Luke 1:4</a></div><div class="verse">That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.</div>(4) <span class= "bld">Wherein thou hast been instructed.</span>—The verb used is that from which are formed the words “catechise,” “catechumen.” &c., and implies oral teaching—in its later sense, teaching preparatory to baptism. The passage is important as showing that such instruction mainly turned on the facts of our Lord’s life, death, and resurrection, and on the records of His teaching.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-5.htm">Luke 1:5</a></div><div class="verse">There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife <i>was</i> of the daughters of Aaron, and her name <i>was</i> Elisabeth.</div>(5) <span class= "bld">There was in the days of Herod.</span>—The writer begins, as he had promised, with the first facts in the divine order of events. The two chapters that follow have every appearance of having been based originally on an independent document, and that probably a Hebrew one. On its probable sources, see <span class= "ital">Introduction.</span> On Herod and this period of his reign, see Notes on <a href="/matthew/2-1.htm" title="Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,">Matthew 2:1</a>.<p><span class= "bld">Zacharias.</span>—The name (= “he who remembers Jehovah,” or, perhaps, “he whom Jehovah remembers,”) had been borne by many in the history of Israel, among others by the son of Jehoiada (<a href="/2_chronicles/24-20.htm" title="And the Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said to them, Thus said God, Why transgress you the commandments of the LORD, that you cannot prosper? because you have forsaken the LORD, he has also forsaken you.">2Chronicles 24:20</a>), and by the prophet of the return from the Babylonian Captivity.<p><span class= "bld">Of the course of Abia.</span>—The Greek word so translated implies a system of rotation, each “set” or “course” of the priests serving from Sabbath to Sabbath. That named after Abia, or Abijah, appears in <a href="/1_chronicles/24-10.htm" title="The seventh to Hakkoz, the eighth to Abijah,">1Chronicles 24:10</a> as the eighth of the twenty-four courses into which the houses of Eleazar and Ithamar were divided by David. On the first return from the Captivity only four of these courses are mentioned as having come back to Jerusalem (<a href="/context/ezra/2-36.htm" title="The priests: the children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua, nine hundred seventy and three.">Ezra 2:36-39</a>), and the name Abijah is not one of them. It appears, however, in later lists (<a href="/nehemiah/10-7.htm" title="Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin,">Nehemiah 10:7</a>; <a href="/nehemiah/12-4.htm" title="Iddo, Ginnetho, Abijah,">Nehemiah 12:4</a>; <a href="/nehemiah/12-17.htm" title="Of Abijah, Zichri; of Miniamin, of Moadiah, Piltai:">Nehemiah 12:17</a>), and the four-and-twenty sets were probably soon re-organised.<p><span class= "bld">His wife was of the daughters of Aaron.</span>—The priests were free to marry outside the limits of their own caste under certain limitations as to the character of their wives (<a href="/leviticus/21-7.htm" title="They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband: for he is holy to his God.">Leviticus 21:7</a>), and the fact of a priestly descent on both sides was therefore worth noticing.<p><span class= "bld">Her name was Elisabeth.</span>—The name in its Hebrew form of Elisheba had belonged to the wife of Aaron, who was of the tribe of Judah (<a href="/exodus/6-23.htm" title="And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Naashon, to wife; and she bore him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.">Exodus 6:23</a>), and was naturally an honoured name among the daughters of the priestly line. It appears in an altered form (<span class= "ital">Jehovah</span> being substituted for <span class= "ital">El</span>) in Jehosheba, the wife of the priest Jehoiada (<a href="/2_kings/11-2.htm" title="But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain.">2Kings 11:2</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-6.htm">Luke 1:6</a></div><div class="verse">And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.</div>(6) <span class= "bld">Commandments and ordinances.</span>—The former word covered all the moral laws of the Pentateuch, the latter (as in <a href="/hebrews/9-1.htm" title="Then truly the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.">Hebrews 9:1</a>), its outward and ceremonial rules.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-7.htm">Luke 1:7</a></div><div class="verse">And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were <i>now</i> well stricken in years.</div>(7) <span class= "bld">Well stricken in years.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">far advanced in their days.</span><p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-8.htm">Luke 1:8</a></div><div class="verse">And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course,</div>(8) <span class= "bld">In the order of his course.</span>—This was settled by rotation. Attempts have been made by reckoning back from the date of the destruction of the Temple, when it is known that the “course” of Joiarib was ministering on the ninth day of the Jewish month Ab, to fix the precise date of the events here narrated, and so of our Lord’s Nativity, but all such attempts are necessarily more or less precarious.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-9.htm">Luke 1:9</a></div><div class="verse">According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.</div>(9)<span class= "bld">His lot was to burn incense.</span>—The order of the courses was, as has been said, one of rotation. The distribution of functions during the week was determined by lot. That of offering incense, symbolising, as it did, the priestly work of presenting the prayers of the people, and joining his own with them (<a href="/psalms/141-2.htm" title="Let my prayer be set forth before you as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.">Psalm 141:2</a>; <a href="/revelation/5-8.htm" title="And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints.">Revelation 5:8</a>), was of all priestly acts the most distinctive (<a href="/2_chronicles/26-18.htm" title="And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said to him, It appertains not to you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD, but to the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary; for you have trespassed; neither shall it be for your honor from the LORD God.">2Chronicles 26:18</a>). At such a moment all the hopes of one who looked for the Christ as the consolation of Israel would gather themselves into one great intercession.<p><span class= "bld">Into the temple of the Lord</span>—i.e., the Holy Place, into which none but the priests might enter.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-10.htm">Luke 1:10</a></div><div class="verse">And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.</div>(10) <span class= "bld">The whole multitude.</span>—Knowing as we do from this Gospel, what hopes were cherished by devout hearts at this time, we may well believe that the prayers of the people, no less than those of the priest, turned towards the manifestation of the kingdom of God. In that crowd, we may well believe, were the aged Simeon (<a href="/luke/2-25.htm" title="And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was on him.">Luke 2:25</a>), and Anna the prophetess (<a href="/luke/2-36.htm" title="And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity;">Luke 2:36</a>), and many others who waited for redemption in Jerusalem (<a href="/luke/2-38.htm" title="And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise to the Lord, and spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.">Luke 2:38</a>). What followed was, on this view, an answer to their prayers.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-11.htm">Luke 1:11</a></div><div class="verse">And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.</div>(11) <span class= "bld">The altar of incense.</span>—The altar stood just in front of the veil that divided the outer sanctuary from the Holy of Holies. It was made of shittim wood, and overlaid with gold, both symbols of incorruption (<a href="/context/exodus/30-1.htm" title="And you shall make an altar to burn incense on: of shittim wood shall you make it.">Exodus 30:1-7</a>; <a href="/exodus/40-5.htm" title="And you shall set the altar of gold for the incense before the ark of the testimony, and put the hanging of the door to the tabernacle.">Exodus 40:5</a>; <a href="/exodus/40-26.htm" title="And he put the golden altar in the tent of the congregation before the veil:">Exodus 40:26</a>). Its position connected it so closely with the innermost sanctuary that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (<a href="/hebrews/9-4.htm" title="Which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant;">Hebrews 9:4</a>; but see Note there) seems to reckon it as belonging to that, and not unto the outer. It symbolised accordingly the closest approach to God which was then possible for any but the high priest, when, in his typical character, he entered the Holy of Holies on the day of Atonement.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-12.htm">Luke 1:12</a></div><div class="verse">And when Zacharias saw <i>him</i>, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.</div>(12) <span class= "bld">He was troubled.</span>—It lies in the nature of the case that during all the long years of Zachariah’s ministration, he had seen no such manifestation. As far as we may reason from the analogy of other angelic appearances, the outward form was that of a “young man clothed in white linen,” or in “bright apparel” (<a href="/matthew/28-3.htm" title="His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:">Matthew 28:3</a>; <a href="/mark/16-5.htm" title="And entering into the sepulcher, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.">Mark 16:5</a>)—a kind of transfigured Levite, as One greater than the angels, when he manifested himself amid the imagery of the Temple, appeared as in the garments of a glorified priesthood (<a href="/revelation/1-13.htm" title="And in the middle of the seven candlesticks one like to the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle.">Revelation 1:13</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-13.htm">Luke 1:13</a></div><div class="verse">But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.</div>(13) <span class= "bld">Thy prayer is heard.</span>—The words imply a prayer on the part of Zacharias, not that he might have a son (that hope appears to have died out long before), but that the Kingdom of God might come. Praying for this he receives more than he asks, and the long yearning of his soul for a son who might bear his part in that Kingdom is at last realised.<p><span class= "bld">Thou shalt call his name John.</span>—The English monosyllable represents the Greek <span class= "ital">Joannes,</span> the Hebrew <span class= "ital">Jochanan.</span> The name appears as belonging to the men of various tribes (<a href="/1_chronicles/3-15.htm" title="And the sons of Josiah were, the firstborn Johanan, the second Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum.">1Chronicles 3:15</a>; <a href="/ezra/8-12.htm" title="And of the sons of Azgad; Johanan the son of Hakkatan, and with him an hundred and ten males.">Ezra 8:12</a>; <a href="/jeremiah/41-11.htm" title="But when Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces that were with him, heard of all the evil that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah had done,">Jeremiah 41:11</a>). As the meaning of the Hebrew word is “Jehovah is gracious,” the announcement of the name was in itself a pledge of the outpouring of the grace of God.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-14.htm">Luke 1:14</a></div><div class="verse">And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.</div>(14) <span class= "bld">Many shall rejoice.</span>—The words point to what had been the priest’s prayer. He had been seeking the joy of many rather than his own, and now the one was to be fruitful in the other.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-15.htm">Luke 1:15</a></div><div class="verse">For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.</div>(15) <span class= "bld">And shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.</span>—The child now promised was to grow up as a Nazarite (<a href="/numbers/6-4.htm" title="All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk.">Numbers 6:4</a>), and to keep that vow all his life, as the representative of the ascetic, the “separated,” form (this is the meaning of the term) of a consecrated life. He was to be what Samson had been (<a href="/judges/13-4.htm" title="Now therefore beware, I pray you, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:">Judges 13:4</a>), and probably Samuel also (<a href="/1_samuel/1-11.htm" title="And she vowed a vow, and said, O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your handmaid, and remember me, and not forget your handmaid, but will give to your handmaid a man child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come on his head.">1Samuel 1:11</a>), and the house of Jonadab the son of Rechab (<a href="/jeremiah/35-6.htm" title="But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, You shall drink no wine, neither you, nor your sons for ever:">Jeremiah 35:6</a>). The close connection between the Nazarite and the prophetic life is seen in <a href="/context/amos/2-11.htm" title="And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O you children of Israel? said the LORD.">Amos 2:11-12</a>. The absence of the lower form of stimulation implied the capacity for the higher enthusiasm which was the gift of God. The same contrast is seen in St. Paul’s words, “Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit (<a href="/ephesians/5-18.htm" title="And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;">Ephesians 5:18</a>).<p><span class= "bld">He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.</span>—The words would be understood by Zacharias from the Hebrew point of view, not as seen in the fuller light of Christian theology. As such they would convey the thought of the highest prophetic inspiration, as in <a href="/isaiah/11-2.htm" title="And the spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;">Isaiah 11:2</a>; <a href="/isaiah/61-1.htm" title="The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on me; because the LORD has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;">Isaiah 61:1</a>; <a href="/joel/2-28.htm" title="And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:">Joel 2:28</a>.<p><span class= "bld">Even from his mother’s womb.</span>—The thought of a life from first to last in harmony with itself and consecrated to the prophet’s work, had its prototype in Jeremiah (<a href="/jeremiah/1-5.htm" title="Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations.">Jeremiah 1:5</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-16.htm">Luke 1:16</a></div><div class="verse">And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.</div>(16) <span class= "bld">Shall he turn to the Lord their God.</span>—The opening words of the message of the New Covenant spring out of the closing words of the last of the prophets (<a href="/malachi/4-6.htm" title="And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.">Malachi 4:6</a>), and point to the revival of the Elijah ministry, which is more definitely announced in the next verse.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-17.htm">Luke 1:17</a></div><div class="verse">And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.</div>(17) <span class= "bld">To the wisdom of the just.</span>—The margin, <span class= "ital">by the wisdom,</span> is undoubtedly the right rendering.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-19.htm">Luke 1:19</a></div><div class="verse">And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.</div>(19) <span class= "bld">I am Gabriel.</span>—No names of angels appear in the Old Testament till after the Babylonian Exile. Then we have Gabriel (= “the strong one—or the hero—of God”), in <a href="/daniel/8-16.htm" title="And I heard a man's voice between the banks of Ulai, which called, and said, Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision.">Daniel 8:16</a>; Michael (= “who is like unto God?”), in <a href="/daniel/10-21.htm" title="But I will show you that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holds with me in these things, but Michael your prince.">Daniel 10:21</a>; <a href="/daniel/12-1.htm" title="And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which stands for the children of your people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time your people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.">Daniel 12:1</a>; Raphael (= “the healer of God”—i.e., the divine healer), in <a href="//apocrypha.org/tobit/12-15.htm" title="I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.">Tobit 12:15</a>, as one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints. As having appeared in the prophecies which, more than any others, were the germ of the Messianic expectations which the people cherished, there was a fitness in the mission now given to Gabriel to prepare the way for the Messiah’s coming.<p><span class= "bld">That stand in the presence of God.</span>—The imagery was drawn from the customs of an Eastern Court, in which those stood who were the most honoured ministers of the king, while others fell prostrate in silent homage. (Comp. the “angel of His presence “in <a href="/isaiah/63-9.htm" title="In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bore them, and carried them all the days of old.">Isaiah 63:9</a>, with our Lord’s language as to the angels that “behold the face” of His Father, <a href="/matthew/18-10.htm" title="Take heed that you despise not one of these little ones; for I say to you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.">Matthew 18:10</a>.)<p><span class= "bld">To shew thee these glad tidings.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">to evangelise.</span> The word is memorable as the first utterance, as far as the Gospel records are concerned, of that which was to be the watchword of the kingdom. It was not, however, a new word, and its employment here was, in part at least, determined by Isaiah’s use of it (<a href="/isaiah/40-9.htm" title="O Zion, that bring good tidings, get you up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God!">Isaiah 40:9</a>; <a href="/isaiah/61-1.htm" title="The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on me; because the LORD has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;">Isaiah 61:1</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-20.htm">Luke 1:20</a></div><div class="verse">And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.</div>(20) <span class= "bld">Behold, thou shalt be dumb.</span>—The question was answered, the demand for a sign granted, but the demand had implied a want of faith, and therefore the sign took the form of a penalty. The vision and the words of the angel, harmonising as they did with all Zechariah’s previous convictions, ought to have been enough for him.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-22.htm">Luke 1:22</a></div><div class="verse">And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless.</div>(22) <span class= "bld">A vision.</span>—The word is used as distinguished from “dream,” to imply that what had been witnessed had been seen with the waking sense. The look of awe, the strange gestures, the unwonted silence, all showed that he had come under the influence of some supernatural power.<p><span class= "bld">He beckoned unto them.</span>—The tense implies continued and repeated action.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-23.htm">Luke 1:23</a></div><div class="verse">And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house.</div>(23) <span class= "bld">The days of his ministration.</span>—The word used for “ministration” conveys, like the ministering spirits” of <a href="/hebrews/1-14.htm" title="Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?">Hebrews 1:14</a>, the idea of liturgical service. The “days” were, according to the usual order of the Temple, from Sabbath to Sabbath (<a href="/2_kings/11-5.htm" title="And he commanded them, saying, This is the thing that you shall do; A third part of you that enter in on the sabbath shall even be keepers of the watch of the king's house;">2Kings 11:5</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-25.htm">Luke 1:25</a></div><div class="verse">Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on <i>me</i>, to take away my reproach among men.</div>(25) <span class= "bld">To take away my reproach among men.</span>—The words express in almost their strongest form the Jewish feeling as to maternity. To have no children was more than a misfortune. It seemed to imply some secret sin which God was punishing with barrenness. So we have Rachel’s cry, “Give me children, or else I die” (<a href="/genesis/30-1.htm" title="And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said to Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.">Genesis 30:1</a>); and Hannah’s “bitterness of soul” when “her adversary provoked her to make her fret” (<a href="/context/1_samuel/1-6.htm" title="And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.">1Samuel 1:6-10</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-26.htm">Luke 1:26</a></div><div class="verse">And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,</div>(26) <span class= "bld">And in the sixth month.</span>—The time is obviously reckoned from the commencement of the period specified in <a href="/luke/1-24.htm" title="And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying,">Luke 1:24</a>.<p><span class= "bld">A city of Galilee, named Nazareth.</span>—The town so named (now <span class= "ital">en-Nazirah</span>) was situated in a valley among the hills that rise to a height of about 500 feet on the north of the Plain of Esdraelon. The valley itself is richly cultivated. The grassy slopes of the hills are clothed in spring-time with flowers. On one side there is a steep ridge that forms something like a precipice (<a href="/luke/4-29.htm" title="And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill where on their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.">Luke 4:29</a>). In the rainy season the streams flow down the slopes of the hills and rush in torrents through the valleys. From a hill just behind the town, the modern <span class= "ital">Neby Ismail,</span> there is one of the finest views in Palestine, including Lebanon and Hermon to the north, Carmel to the west, with glimpses of the Mediterranean, and to the south the Plain of Esdraelon and the mountains of Samaria, to the east and south-east Gilead, and Tabor, and Grilboa. It is a three days’ journey from Jerusalem, about twenty miles from Ptolemais, and eighteen from the Sea of Galilee, six from Mount Tabor, about six from Cana, and nine from Nain. The name, as stated in the Note on <a href="/matthew/2-23.htm" title="And he came and dwelled in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.">Matthew 2:23</a>, was probably derived from the Hebrew <span class= "ital">Netzer</span> (= a branch), and conveying something of the same meaning as our <span class= "ital">-hurst,</span> or <span class= "ital">-holm,</span> in English topography.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-27.htm">Luke 1:27</a></div><div class="verse">To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name <i>was</i> Mary.</div>(27) <span class= "bld">To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph.</span>—Of the parentage of Mary the canonical Gospels tell us nothing, and the legends of the apocryphal have no claim to credit. That her mother’s name was Anna, that she surpassed the maidens of her own age in wisdom, that she went as a child into the Temple, that she had many who sought her hand, and that they agreed to decide their claims by laying their rods before the Holy Place and seeing which budded, and that Joseph thus became the accepted suitor—this may be worth mentioning, as having left its impress on Christian art, but it has no claim to the character even of tradition. The scanty notices in the Gospels are (1) that she was a “cousin,” or more generally a “kinswoman,” of Elizabeth, and may, therefore, have been, by her parentage, wholly or in part of the daughters of Aaron. (2) That she had a sister who, according to a somewhat doubtful construction of an ambiguous sentence, may also have borne the name of Mary or Mariam (the “Miriam” of the Old Testament), and been afterwards the wife of Cleophas, or, more correctly, Clopas (<a href="/john/19-25.htm" title="Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.">John 19:25</a>). The absence of any mention of her parents suggests the thought that she was an orphan, and the whole narrative of the Nativity presupposes poverty. Assuming the <span class= "ital">Magnificat</span> to have been not merely the sudden inspiration of the moment, but, in some sense, the utterance of the cherished thoughts of years, we may think of her as feeding upon the psalms and hymns and prophecies of the Sacred Books, and knowing, as she did, that the man to whom she was betrothed was of the house of David, this may well have drawn her expectations of redemption into the line of looking for the Christ, who was to be the son of David. Of Joseph, we know that he was, possibly by a twofold lineage (but see Note on <a href="/luke/3-23.htm" title="And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,">Luke 3:23</a>), the heir of that house, and must have known himself to be so. He was but a carpenter in a Galilean village, probably older than his betrothed, possibly a widower with sons and daughters, possibly the guardian of nephews and nieces who had been left orphans, but the documents which contained his genealogy must have been precious heirlooms, and the hopes that God would raise up the tabernacle of David that had fallen, to which one of those sons or nephews afterwards gave utterance (<a href="/acts/15-16.htm" title="After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:">Acts 15:16</a>), could never have been utterly extinguished.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-28.htm">Luke 1:28</a></div><div class="verse">And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, <i>thou that art</i> highly favoured, the Lord <i>is</i> with thee: blessed <i>art</i> thou among women.</div>(28) <span class= "bld">Highly favoured.</span>—The verb is the same as that which is translated, “hath made us accepted “in <a href="/ephesians/1-6.htm" title="To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved.">Ephesians 1:6</a>; and, on the whole, this, which is expressed in one of the marginal readings, seems the truest. The <span class= "ital">plena gratiâ</span> of the Vulgate has no warrant in the meaning of the word.<p><span class= "bld">The Lord is with thee.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">the Lord be with thee,</span> as the more usual formula of salutation, as in <a href="/ruth/2-4.htm" title="And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, The LORD be with you. And they answered him, The LORD bless you.">Ruth 2:4</a>.<p><span class= "bld">Blessed art thou among women.</span>—The words are omitted in many of the best MSS.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-29.htm">Luke 1:29</a></div><div class="verse">And when she saw <i>him</i>, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.</div>(29) <span class= "bld">she was troubled at his saying.</span>—The same word is used as had been used of Zacharias. With Mary, as with him, the first feeling was one of natural terror. Who was the strange visitor, and what did the strange greeting mean?<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-30.htm">Luke 1:30</a></div><div class="verse">And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.</div>(30) <span class= "bld">Thou hast found favour with God.</span>—The noun is the same as that elsewhere translated “grace,” but the latter word, though fit enough in itself, has become so associated with the technicalities of theology that it is better, in this place, to retain “favour.”<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-31.htm">Luke 1:31</a></div><div class="verse">And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.</div>(31) <span class= "bld">Behold, thou shalt conceive.</span>—St. Luke does not refer to the prophecy of <a href="/isaiah/7-14.htm" title="Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.">Isaiah 7:14</a>, but it is clear from Mary’s answer that she understood the words of the angel in the sense which St. Matthew gives to those of the prophet. What perplexed her was the reference to the conception and the birth in a prediction which made no mention of her approaching marriage. The absence of the reference is at least worth noticing, as showing that men were not necessarily led by their interpretation of the prophecy to imagine its fulfilment.<p><span class= "bld">Shalt call his name JESUS.</span>—See Note on <a href="/matthew/1-21.htm" title="And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.">Matthew 1:21</a>. The revelation of the name, with all its mysterious fulness of meaning, was made, we may note, to Joseph and Mary independently.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-32.htm">Luke 1:32</a></div><div class="verse">He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:</div>(32) <span class= "bld">Shall be called the Son of the Highest.</span>—It is noticeable that this name applied to our Lord by the angel, appears afterwards as uttered by the demoniacs (<a href="/mark/5-7.htm" title="And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, you Son of the most high God? I adjure you by God, that you torment me not.">Mark 5:7</a>). On the history of the name, see Note on <a href="/mark/5-7.htm" title="And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, you Son of the most high God? I adjure you by God, that you torment me not.">Mark 5:7</a>.<p><span class= "bld">The throne of his father David.</span>—The words seem at first to suggest the thought that the Virgin was of the house of David, and that the title to the throne was thus derived through her. This may have been so (see Note on <a href="/context/luke/3-23.htm" title="And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,">Luke 3:23-38</a>), and the intermarriage which had taken place in olden times between the house of Aaron and that of David (<a href="/exodus/6-23.htm" title="And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Naashon, to wife; and she bore him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.">Exodus 6:23</a>; <a href="/2_kings/11-2.htm" title="But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain.">2Kings 11:2</a>) show that this might be quite consistent with the relationship to Elizabeth mentioned in <a href="/luke/1-36.htm" title="And, behold, your cousin Elisabeth, she has also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.">Luke 1:36</a>. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the genealogies, both in St. Matthew and St. Luke, appear, at first sight, to give the lineage of Joseph only, and therefore that, if this were, as many have believed, the Evangelist’s point of view, our Lord, notwithstanding the supernatural birth, was thought of as inheriting from him. The form of the promise, which might well lead to the expectation of a revived kingdom of Israel after the manner of that of David, takes its place among the most memorable instances of prophecies that have been fulfilled in quite another fashion than those who first heard them could have imagined possible. That the Evangelist who recorded it held that it was fulfilled in the Kingdom of Heaven, the spiritual sovereignty of the Christ, is shown by the fact that he records it in the same Gospel as that which tells of the Crucifixion and Ascension.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-33.htm">Luke 1:33</a></div><div class="verse">And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.</div>(33) <span class= "bld">He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever.</span>—Here, again, the apparent promise is that of a kingdom restored to Israel such as the disciples expected even after the Resurrection (<a href="/acts/1-6.htm" title="When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?">Acts 1:6</a>). It needed to be interpreted by events before men could see that it was fulfilled in the history of Christendom as the true Israel of God (<a href="/romans/9-6.htm" title="Not as though the word of God has taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:">Romans 9:6</a>; <a href="/galatians/6-16.htm" title="And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and on the Israel of God.">Galatians 6:16</a>).<p><span class= "bld">Of his kingdom there shall be no end.</span>—The words of St. Paul, in <a href="/context/1_corinthians/15-24.htm" title="Then comes the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.">1Corinthians 15:24-28</a>, seem at first to point to a limit of time when the kingdom of the Christ shall find an end, but a closer study of his meaning shows that he is speaking of that kingdom as involving contest with the hostile forces of evil. The exercise of sovereignty may, in this sense, cease when all conflict is over, but it ceases by being perfected, not by passing away after the fashion of earthly kingdoms. The delegated or mediatorial headship of the Christ is merged in the absolute unity of the monarchy of God.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-34.htm">Luke 1:34</a></div><div class="verse">Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?</div>(34) <span class= "bld">How shall this be?</span>—The question of the Virgin is not altogether of the same nature as that of Zacharias in <a href="/luke/1-18.htm" title="And Zacharias said to the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.">Luke 1:18</a>. He asks by what sign he shall know that the words were true which told him of a son in his old age. Mary is told of a far greater marvel, for her question shows that she understood the angel to speak of the birth as antecedent to her marriage, and she, accepting the words in faith, does not demand a sign, but reverently seeks to know the manner of their accomplishment.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-35.htm">Luke 1:35</a></div><div class="verse">And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.</div>(35) <span class= "bld">The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee.</span>—See Note on <a href="/luke/1-15.htm" title="For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.">Luke 1:15</a>. Here, however, the context would suggest to one familiar with the sacred writings, another aspect of the Spirit’s work, as quickening the dead chaos into life (<a href="/genesis/1-2.htm" title="And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.">Genesis 1:2</a>), as being the source of life to all creation (<a href="/psalms/104-30.htm" title="You send forth your spirit, they are created: and you renew the face of the earth.">Psalm 104:30</a>).<p><span class= "bld">The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.</span>—The divine name is used in obvious harmony with “the Son of the Highest” in <a href="/luke/1-32.htm" title="He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David:">Luke 1:32</a>.<p><span class= "bld">Therefore also . . . shall be called the Son of God.</span>—The words appear to rest the title, “Son of God,” rather on the supernatural birth than on the eternal pre-existence of the Son as the Word that was “in the beginning with God and was God” (<a href="/john/1-1.htm" title="In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.">John 1:1</a>), and we may accept the fact that the message of the angel was so far a partial, not a complete, revelation of the mystery of the Incarnation. It gave a sufficient reason for the name which should be given to the Son of Mary, and more was not then required.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-36.htm">Luke 1:36</a></div><div class="verse">And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.</div>(36) <span class= "bld">Thy cousin Elisabeth.</span>—See Notes on <a href="/luke/1-27.htm" title="To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.">Luke 1:27</a>; <a href="/luke/1-32.htm" title="He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David:">Luke 1:32</a>. Taking the word in its usual sense, it would imply that either the father or the mother of Mary had been of the house of Aaron, or that the mother of Elizabeth had been of the house of David.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-38.htm">Luke 1:38</a></div><div class="verse">And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.</div>(38) <span class= "bld">Behold the handmaid of the Lord . . .</span>—The words seem to show a kind of half-consciousness that the lot which she thus accepts might bring with it unknown sufferings, as well as untold blessedness. She shrinks, as it were, from the awfulness of the position thus assigned to her, but she can say, as her Son said afterwards, when His time of agony was come, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” It may be that the more immediate peril of which St. Matthew speaks (1:19). flashed even then upon her soul as one that could not be escaped. (Comp. <a href="/luke/2-35.htm" title="(Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.">Luke 2:35</a>.)<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-39.htm">Luke 1:39</a></div><div class="verse">And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda;</div>(39) <span class= "bld">The hill country . . . a city of Juda.</span>—The description is too vague to be identified with any certainty. The form of the proper noun is the same as that in “Bethlehem, of the land of Juda,” in <a href="/matthew/2-6.htm" title="And you Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, are not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of you shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.">Matthew 2:6</a>. The city may have been one of those assigned to the priests within the limits of the tribe of Judah, and if so, it is interesting to think of the Virgin as undertaking a journey which brought her not far from the very spot in which she was to give birth to the divine Child. No city of the name of Juda is known, but there is a Juttah in <a href="/joshua/15-55.htm" title="Maon, Carmel, and Ziph, and Juttah,">Joshua 15:55</a>; <a href="/joshua/21-16.htm" title="And Ain with her suburbs, and Juttah with her suburbs, and Bethshemesh with her suburbs; nine cities out of those two tribes.">Joshua 21:16</a>, in the neighbourhood of Maon and the Judæan Carmel, and therefore in the “hill country,” which may possibly be that which is here referred to.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-41.htm">Luke 1:41</a></div><div class="verse">And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:</div>(41) <span class= "bld">The salutation of Mary.</span>—The words of the greeting were, we may believe, the usual formula, “Peace be with thee,” or “The Lord be with thee,” possibly united with some special words of gratulation on what she had heard from the angel.<p><span class= "bld">Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.</span>—What had been predicted of the Child (<a href="/luke/1-15.htm" title="For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.">Luke 1:15</a>) was now fulfilled <span class= "ital">ex abundanti</span> in the mother. The fact related, so far as we look to human sources of information, must obviously have come to St. Luke, directly or indirectly, from the Virgin herself.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-42.htm">Luke 1:42</a></div><div class="verse">And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed <i>art</i> thou among women, and blessed <i>is</i> the fruit of thy womb.</div>(42) <span class= "bld">Blessed art thou among women.</span>—The language, like that of most of the utterances in these chapters, is taken from the poetry of the older Scriptures, but there is a singular contrast between its application there to the murderess Jael (<a href="/judges/5-24.htm" title="Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.">Judges 5:24</a>), and here to the mother of the Lord.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-43.htm">Luke 1:43</a></div><div class="verse">And whence <i>is</i> this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?</div>(43) <span class= "bld">Whence is this to me</span> . . .?—The sudden inspiration bids Elizabeth, rising above all lower thoughts, to recognise that the child of Mary would be also the Son of the Highest. The contrast leaves no room for doubt that she used the word “Lord” in its highest sense. “Great “as her own son was to be (<a href="/luke/1-15.htm" title="For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.">Luke 1:15</a>) in the sight of the Lord, here was the mother of One yet greater, even of the Lord Himself.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-45.htm">Luke 1:45</a></div><div class="verse">And blessed <i>is</i> she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.</div>(45) <span class= "bld">Blessed is she that believed.</span>—The two renderings, “for there shall be,” and “that there shall be,” are equally tenable grammatically. On internal grounds there seems a balance in favour of the latter, as the other interpretation appears to make the fulfilment of the promise dependent upon the Virgin’s faith.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-46.htm">Luke 1:46</a></div><div class="verse">And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,</div>(46) <span class= "bld">My soul doth magnify the Lord.</span>—We come to the first of the great canticles recorded by St. Luke, which, since the time of Cæsarius of Arles (A.D. 540), who first introduced them into public worship, have formed part of the hymnal treasures of Western Christendom. We may think of the Virgin as having committed to writing at the time, or having remembered afterwards, possibly with some natural modifications, what she then spoke. Here the song of praise is manifestly based upon that of Hannah (<a href="/context/1_samuel/2-1.htm" title="And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoices in the LORD, my horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over my enemies; because I rejoice in your salvation.">1Samuel 2:1-10</a>), both in its opening words and in much of its substance, and is so far significant of the hopes, and, if we may so speak, studies, of the maiden of Nazareth.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-47.htm">Luke 1:47</a></div><div class="verse">And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.</div>(47) <span class= "bld">In God my Saviour.</span>—We may well believe that this choice of the name was determined by the meaning of the name, implying God’s work of salvation, which she had been told was to be given to her Son.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-48.htm">Luke 1:48</a></div><div class="verse">For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.</div>(48) <span class= "bld">The low estate</span> <span class= "bld">of his handmaiden.</span>—Note the recurrence of the word that had been used in <a href="/luke/1-37.htm" title="For with God nothing shall be impossible.">Luke 1:37</a>, as expressing the character which she was now ready to accept, whatever it might involve.<p><span class= "bld">All generations shall call me blessed.</span>—The words have, of course, been partly instrumental in bringing about their own fulfilment; but what a vision of the future they must have implied then on the part of the village maiden who uttered them! Not her kinswoman only, but all generations should join in that beatitude.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-50.htm">Luke 1:50</a></div><div class="verse">And his mercy <i>is</i> on them that fear him from generation to generation.</div>(50) <span class= "bld">His mercy is on them that fear him.</span>—The words, as read by those for whom St. Luke wrote, would seem almost to foreshadow the Gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Those that “feared God” were to be found not only among the children of Abraham, but also among “every nation” (<a href="/acts/10-2.htm" title="A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always.">Acts 10:2</a>; <a href="/acts/10-35.htm" title="But in every nation he that fears him, and works righteousness, is accepted with him.">Acts 10:35</a>), and He would shew forth His mercy to all in whom that temper should be found.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-51.htm">Luke 1:51</a></div><div class="verse">He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.</div>(51) <span class= "bld">He hath shewed strength.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">He wrought strength.</span> Here the parallelism with <a href="/1_samuel/2-3.htm" title="Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogance come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.">1Samuel 2:3</a> becomes very close. Of whom the speaker thought as among the “proud,” we cannot know. They may have been the potentates of the world in which she lived, Herod and the Emperor of Rome. They may have been the men of Jerusalem, who despised Galilee; or those of the other towns and villages of Galilee, who despised Nazareth; or, though less probably, those of Nazareth itself, who despised the carpenter and his betrothed.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-52.htm">Luke 1:52</a></div><div class="verse">He hath put down the mighty from <i>their</i> seats, and exalted them of low degree.</div>(52) <span class= "bld">The mighty.</span>—The word (that from which we get our English “dynasty”) is applied to the eunuch “of great authority” under Candace, in <a href="/acts/8-27.htm" title="And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship,">Acts 8:27</a>, and is used as a divine name in “the blessed and only Potentate” of <a href="/1_timothy/6-15.htm" title="Which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;">1Timothy 6:15</a>. Here it is used generally of all human rulers.<p><span class= "bld">From their seats.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">their thrones,</span> as the word is for the most part translated. (Comp. <a href="/matthew/19-28.htm" title="And Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, That you which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, you also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.">Matthew 19:28</a>, and in this very chapter, <a href="/luke/1-32.htm" title="He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David:">Luke 1:32</a>.)<p><span class= "bld">Of low degree.</span>—The adjective is that from which the noun translated “low estate,” in <a href="/luke/1-48.htm" title="For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from now on all generations shall call me blessed.">Luke 1:48</a>, had been formed.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-53.htm">Luke 1:53</a></div><div class="verse">He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.</div>(53) <span class= "bld">He hath filled the hungry.</span>—It is interesting to note the manner in which the song of the Virgin anticipates the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Plain as reported by St. Luke (<a href="/luke/6-21.htm" title="Blessed are you that hunger now: for you shall be filled. Blessed are you that weep now: for you shall laugh.">Luke 6:21</a>). The words, like those of the beatitudes, have both their literal and their spiritual fulfilments. Both those who trusted in their earthly riches, and those who gloried in their fancied spiritual wealth, were sent empty away, while the “hungry,” those who craved for a higher blessedness, were filled with the peace and righteousness which they sought.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-54.htm">Luke 1:54</a></div><div class="verse">He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of <i>his</i> mercy;</div>(54) <span class= "bld">He hath holpen his servant Israel.</span>—Up to this point the hymn has been one of personal thanks-giving. Now we find that all the soul of the maiden of Nazareth is with her people. Her joy in the “great things “which God has done for her rests on the fact that they are “great things “for Israel also. The word which she uses for her people is that which expresses their relation to God as “the servant” of Jehovah, who is prominent in the later chapters of Isaiah, and is in <a href="/isaiah/41-8.htm" title="But you, Israel, are my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.">Isaiah 41:8</a> identified with the nation, as elsewhere with the nation’s Head (<a href="/isaiah/42-1.htm" title="Behold my servant, whom I uphold; my elect, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit on him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.">Isaiah 42:1</a>). One may see in the utterance of this hope already seen as realised, an indication of the early date of the hymn. At the time when St. Luke wrote, the rejection, not the restoration of Israel, was the dominant thought in men’s minds.<p><span class= "bld">In remembrance.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">in order to remember.</span> He helped Israel, as with the purpose to prove Himself not unmindful of His promised mercy.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-55.htm">Luke 1:55</a></div><div class="verse">As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.</div>(55) <span class= "bld">As he</span> <span class= "bld">spake to our fathers.</span>—As the sentence stands in English, the words “Abraham and his seed” seem in apposition with “forefathers,” and to be added as explaining it. In the Greek, however, they are in a different connection, and belong to what had gone before, the construction being as follows: “To remember His mercy (as He spake unto our forefathers) to Abraham and his seed for ever.” The mercy that had been shown to Abraham was, as it were, working even yet.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-56.htm">Luke 1:56</a></div><div class="verse">And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house.</div>(56) <span class= "bld">And Mary abode with her about three months.</span>—This brings the time so close to the birth of the Baptist that we might well deem it likely that the Virgin waited for it. On the other hand, the next verse seems almost to imply her previous departure. In any case, we may think of the three months as a time of much communion of heart and hope on the great things which God had done and was about to do for Israel.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-58.htm">Luke 1:58</a></div><div class="verse">And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her.</div>(58) <span class= "bld">Her neighbours and her cousins.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">her kindred,</span> as including a wider range of relations than that which comes within our definition of cousinship. The words imply that they had heard something of the vision in the Temple, and of what had been foretold of the future greatness of the child then born.<p><span class= "bld">Had shewed great mercy upon her.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">had magnified His mercy.</span> The verb is the same as that which opens the <span class= "ital">Magnificat,</span> and may well be looked upon as a kind of echo of it. The phrase is essentially a Hebrew one. (Comp. <a href="/1_samuel/12-24.htm" title="Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he has done for you.">1Samuel 12:24</a>.)<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-59.htm">Luke 1:59</a></div><div class="verse">And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father.</div>(59) <span class= "bld">They came to circumcise the child.</span>—The day of circumcision, as the admission of the child into God’s covenant with his people, was, like the day of the baptism of infants among Christians, one on which relatives were invited to be present as witnesses, and was commonly followed by a feast. It was also, as baptism has come to be, the time on which the child received the name which was to bear its witness of the prayers of his parents for him, and of his personal relation to the God of his fathers.<p><span class= "bld">They called him</span> <span class= "bld">. . .</span>—The Greek tense is strictly imperfect—<span class= "ital">they were calling him.</span> The choice of the name commonly rested with the father, but the kinsfolk seem to have assumed that, in the dumbness of the father, the duty devolved on them, and they, according to a custom not uncommon, showed their respect for the father by choosing his name.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-60.htm">Luke 1:60</a></div><div class="verse">And his mother answered and said, Not <i>so</i>; but he shall be called John.</div>(60) <span class= "bld">Not so; but he shall be called John.</span>—It is obvious from what follows that the writing-tablet had been in frequent use, and in this way the husband must have told the wife of the name which had been given by the angel.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-61.htm">Luke 1:61</a></div><div class="verse">And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name.</div>(61) <span class= "bld">There is none of thy kindred . . .</span>—The fact is not without interest, as probably showing that Zacharias did not come within the circle of those related to the Sadducean high priests, among whom (some thirty years later, it is true) we find that name (<a href="/acts/4-6.htm" title="And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem.">Acts 4:6</a>; <a href="/acts/5-17.htm" title="Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with indignation,">Acts 5:17</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-62.htm">Luke 1:62</a></div><div class="verse">And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called.</div>(62) <span class= "bld">They made signs to his father.</span>—It seems probable—almost, indeed, certain—from this, that Zacharias was deprived of the power of hearing as well as speech, and had passed into the condition of one who was naturally a deaf mute.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-63.htm">Luke 1:63</a></div><div class="verse">And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all.</div>(63) <span class= "bld">A writing table.</span>—The tablets in common use at this time throughout the Roman empire were commonly of wood, covered with a thin coat of wax, on which men wrote with the sharp point which has left its traces in our language, in the word “style,” in its literal and figurative senses.<p><span class= "bld">His name is John.</span>—There is something emphatic in the use of the present tense. It was not a question to be discussed. The name had been given already.<p><span class= "bld">And they marvelled all.</span>—This confirms the view given above as to the previous deafness of Zacharias. There would have been no ground for wonder, had he heard the discussion. It was the coincidence that surprised them, hardly less than the utterance.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-64.htm">Luke 1:64</a></div><div class="verse">And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue <i>loosed</i>, and he spake, and praised God.</div>(64) <span class= "bld">His tongue loosed.</span>—The verb is supplied by the translators because the one previously used applied strictly only to the mouth.<p><span class= "bld">He spake, and praised God.</span>—Probably, in substance, if not in words, as in the hymn that follows. The insertion of the two verses that follow seems to imply that some interval of time passed before its actual utterance.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-65.htm">Luke 1:65</a></div><div class="verse">And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judaea.</div>(65) <span class= "bld">All the hill country of Judæa.</span>—The district so designated included the mountain plateau to the south of Jerusalem, which reaches its highest point at Hebron. (See Note on <a href="/luke/1-39.htm" title="And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda;">Luke 1:39</a>.) The whole verse describes the gradual spread of the report of the events from the immediate neighbourhood to the wider district of which it formed a part.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-66.htm">Luke 1:66</a></div><div class="verse">And all they that heard <i>them</i> laid <i>them</i> up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him.</div>(66) <span class= "bld">What manner of child shall this be</span>!—Better, <span class= "ital">what shall this child be!</span> The question was not, what kind of child He should be, but what the child would grow to.<p><span class= "bld">And the hand of the Lord was with him.</span>—Some good MSS. give, “for the hand of the Lord,” as giving the reason for the previous question. The “hand” implies, in the familiar language of the Old Testament (<span class= "ital">e.g.,</span> <a href="/judges/2-15.htm" title="Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn to them: and they were greatly distressed.">Judges 2:15</a>; <a href="/2_chronicles/30-12.htm" title="Also in Judah the hand of God was to give them one heart to do the commandment of the king and of the princes, by the word of the LORD.">2Chronicles 30:12</a>; <a href="/ezra/7-9.htm" title="For on the first day of the first month began he to go up from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God on him.">Ezra 7:9</a>), what we more commonly call the “guidance” or the “providence” of God. The phrase was essentially a Hebrew one; one of the vivid anthropomorphic idioms which they could use more boldly than other nations, because they had clearer thoughts of God as not made after the similitude of men (<a href="/deuteronomy/4-12.htm" title="And the LORD spoke to you out of the middle of the fire: you heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only you heard a voice.">Deuteronomy 4:12</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-67.htm">Luke 1:67</a></div><div class="verse">And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying,</div>(67) <span class= "bld">Was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied.</span>—The latter word appears to be used in its wider sense of an inspired utterance of praise (as, <span class= "ital">e.g.,</span> in <a href="/1_samuel/19-20.htm" title="And Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was on the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.">1Samuel 19:20</a>; <a href="/context/1_corinthians/14-24.htm" title="But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believes not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all:">1Corinthians 14:24-25</a>). The hymn that follows appears as the report, written, probably, by Zachariah himself, of the praises that had been uttered in the first moments of his recovered gift of speech. As such, we may think of it as expressing the pent-up thoughts of the months of silence. The fire had long been kindling, and at last he spake with his tongue.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-68.htm">Luke 1:68</a></div><div class="verse">Blessed <i>be</i> the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,</div>(68) <span class= "bld">Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.</span>—The whole hymn is, like the <span class= "ital">Magnificat,</span> pre-eminently Hebrew in character, almost every phrase having its counterpart in Psalm or Prophet; and, like it, has come to take a prominent place in the devotions of the western Churches. Its first appearance, as so used, is in Gaul, under Cæsarius of Aries.<p><span class= "bld">Visited.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">looked upon, regarded.</span> The four centuries that had passed since the last of the prophets are thought of as a time during which the “face of the Lord” had been turned away from Israel. Now He looked on it again, not to visit them (as we more commonly use the word) for their offences, but to deliver.<p><span class= "bld">Redeemed his people.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">wrought redemption for His people.</span> The noun is formed from that which is translated “ransom” in <a href="/matthew/20-28.htm" title="Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered to, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.">Matthew 20:28</a>, where see Note. Its occurrence here is noticeable as showing how large an element the thought of deliverance through a ransom was in all the Messianic expectations of the time. (Comp. <a href="/luke/2-38.htm" title="And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise to the Lord, and spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.">Luke 2:38</a>.) The past tense (in the Greek the aorist) is used by Zacharias as, in the joy of prophetic foresight, seeing the end of what had been begun. The next verse shows that he looked for this redemption as coming not through the child that had been born to him, but through the Son, as yet unborn, of Mary.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-69.htm">Luke 1:69</a></div><div class="verse">And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;</div>(69) <span class= "bld">Hath raised up an horn of salvation.</span>—The symbolism of the <span class= "ital">horn</span> comes from <a href="/psalms/132-17.htm" title="There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for my anointed.">Psalm 132:17</a>, where it is used of the representative of the House of David, and answers to the “Anointed” of the other clause of the verse. It originated obviously in the impression made by the horns of the bull or stag, as the symbols of strength. Here, following in the steps of the Psalmist, Zacharias uses it as a description of the coming Christ, who is to be raised up in the House of David.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-70.htm">Luke 1:70</a></div><div class="verse">As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began:</div>(70) <span class= "bld">His holy prophets, which have been since the world began.</span>—The words were probably more than a lofty paraphrase of the more usual language, “of old time,” “of ancient days,” and imply a reference to the great first Gospel, as it has been called, of <a href="/genesis/3-15.htm" title="And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.">Genesis 3:15</a>, as well as to those made to Abraham, who is the first person named as a prophet (<a href="/genesis/20-7.htm" title="Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for you, and you shall live: and if you restore her not, know you that you shall surely die, you, and all that are yours.">Genesis 20:7</a>).<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-71.htm">Luke 1:71</a></div><div class="verse">That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us;</div>(71) <span class= "bld">That we should be saved from our enemies.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">salvation from our enemies,</span> in apposition with “the horn of salvation” of <a href="/luke/1-69.htm" title="And has raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;">Luke 1:69</a>. The “enemies” present to the thoughts of Zacharias may have been the Roman conquerors of Judæa; the Idumæan House of Herod may have been among “those who hate.”<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-72.htm">Luke 1:72</a></div><div class="verse">To perform the mercy <i>promised</i> to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant;</div>(72) <span class= "bld">To perform the mercy.</span>—The verse has been thought, and with apparent reason, to contain a reference, after the manner of the ancient prophets (comp. <a href="/isaiah/8-3.htm" title="And I went to the prophetess; and she conceived, and bore a son. Then said the LORD to me, Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz.">Isaiah 8:3</a>; <a href="/context/micah/1-10.htm" title="Declare you it not at Gath, weep you not at all: in the house of Aphrah roll yourself in the dust.">Micah 1:10-15</a>), to the name of the speaker, of his wife, and of his child. In “performing mercy,” we find an allusion to John or Jochanan (= “The Lord be merciful”); in “remembering His holy covenant,” to the name Zacharias (= “Whom Jehovah remembers”); in the “oath” of <a href="/luke/1-73.htm" title="The oath which he swore to our father Abraham,">Luke 1:73</a>, to that of Elizabeth or Elisheba (= “The oath of my God”). The play upon the words would, of course, be obvious in the original Hebrew (<span class= "ital">i.e.,</span> Aramaic) of the hymn, which we have only in its Greek version.<p><span class= "bld">His holy covenant.</span>—The covenant is clearly that made with Abraham in <a href="/genesis/15-18.htm" title="In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates:">Genesis 15:18</a>. In thus going back to that as the starting-point of the New Covenant which was to be made in Christ, Zacharias anticipates the teaching of St. Paul in <a href="/context/galatians/3-15.htm" title="Brothers, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man cancels, or adds thereto.">Galatians 3:15-19</a>.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-73.htm">Luke 1:73</a></div><div class="verse">The oath which he sware to our father Abraham,</div>(73) <span class= "bld">The oath.</span>—The noun is in apposition to the “covenant” of the preceding verse, though not grammatically in the same case with it.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-74.htm">Luke 1:74</a></div><div class="verse">That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear,</div>(74) <span class= "bld">That he would grant unto us</span> <span class= "bld">. . .</span>—The form of the Greek indicates even more definitely than the English that this was the end to which the “covenant” and the “oath” had all along been pointing.<p><span class= "bld">Might serve him without fear.</span>—The service is that of worship as well as obedience. This was the end for which deliverance from enemies was but a means. Here, again, the form of the hope points to its early date. What prospect was there, when St. Luke wrote his Gospel, of any deliverance of the Jews from their earthly enemies? By that time, what was transitory in the hymn had vanished, and the words had gained the higher permanent sense which they have had for centuries in the worship of the Church of Christ.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-75.htm">Luke 1:75</a></div><div class="verse">In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.</div>(75) <span class= "bld">In holiness and righteousness.</span>—The same combination is found, though in an inverted order, in <a href="/ephesians/4-24.htm" title="And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.">Ephesians 4:24</a>. “Holiness” has special reference to man’s relations to God; “justice” to those which connect him with his fellow men; but, like all such words, they more or less overlap.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-76.htm">Luke 1:76</a></div><div class="verse">And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;</div>(76) <span class= "bld">Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest.</span>—Note the recurrence of the same divine name that had appeared in <a href="/luke/1-32.htm" title="He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David:">Luke 1:32</a>; <a href="/luke/1-35.htm" title="And the angel answered and said to her, The Holy Ghost shall come on you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.">Luke 1:35</a>.<p><span class= "bld">Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord.</span>—The verse is, as it were, an echo of two great prophecies, combining the “<span class= "ital">goi</span>ng before Jehovah” of <a href="/malachi/3-1.htm" title="Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom you delight in: behold, he shall come, said the LORD of hosts.">Malachi 3:1</a>, with the “preparing the way” of <a href="/isaiah/40-3.htm" title="The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare you the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.">Isaiah 40:3</a>.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-77.htm">Luke 1:77</a></div><div class="verse">To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,</div>(77) <span class= "bld">To give knowledge of salvation.</span>—This, as the form of the Greek verb shows, was to be the object of the Baptist’s mission. Men had lost sight of the true nature of salvation. They were wrapt in dreams of deliverance from outward enemies, and needed to be taught that it consisted in forgiveness for the sins of the past, and power to overcome sins in the future.<p><span class= "bld">The remission of their sins.</span>—Historically, this was the first utterance of the words in the Gospel records, and we may well think of it as having helped to determine the form which the work of the Baptist eventually took. It is interesting to compare it with our Lord’s words at the Last Supper (<a href="/matthew/26-28.htm" title="For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.">Matthew 26:28</a>), and so to think of it as being the key-note of the whole work from the beginning to the end. Different in outward form as were the ministries of the Baptist and our Lord, they agreed in this.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-78.htm">Luke 1:78</a></div><div class="verse">Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,</div>(78) <span class= "bld">Through the tender mercy.</span>—Literally, <span class= "ital">on account of the bowels of mercy of our God.</span> After this manner the Jews spoke of what we should call <span class= "ital">“</span>the heart” of God. The word was a favourite one with St. Paul, as in the Greek of <a href="/2_corinthians/7-15.htm" title="And his inward affection is more abundant toward you, whilst he remembers the obedience of you all, how with fear and trembling you received him.">2Corinthians 7:15</a>; <a href="/context/philippians/1-8.htm" title="For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.">Philippians 1:8, Php_2:1</a>; <a href="/colossians/3-12.htm" title=" Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering;">Colossians 3:12</a>. The pity that moved the heart of God is thought of, not as the instrument through which, but that on account of which, the work of the Baptist was to be accomplished.<p><span class= "bld">The dayspring from on high.</span>—The English word expresses the force of the Greek very beautifully. The dawn is seen in the East rising upward, breaking through the darkness. We must remember, however, that the word had acquired another specially Messianic association, through its use in the LXX. version as the equivalent for the “Branch,” “that which springs upward,” of <a href="/jeremiah/23-5.htm" title="Behold, the days come, said the LORD, that I will raise to David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.">Jeremiah 23:5</a>; <a href="/zechariah/3-8.htm" title="Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you, and your fellows that sit before you: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH.">Zechariah 3:8</a>. Here the thought of the sunrise is prominent, and it connects itself with such predictions as, “The glory of the Lord hath risen upon thee” (<a href="/isaiah/60-1.htm" title="Arise, shine; for your light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen on you.">Isaiah 60:1</a>), “The sun of righteousness shall rise” (<a href="/malachi/4-2.htm" title="But to you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and you shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.">Malachi 4:2</a>). What had become a Messianic name is taken in its primary sense, and turned into a parable.<p><span class= "bld">Hath visited us.</span>—Better, <span class= "ital">hath looked upon us.</span><p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-79.htm">Luke 1:79</a></div><div class="verse">To give light to them that sit in darkness and <i>in</i> the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.</div>(79) <span class= "bld">To give light to them that sit in darkness.</span>—The words are an echo of those of <a href="/isaiah/9-2.htm" title="The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, on them has the light shined.">Isaiah 9:2</a>, which we have already met with in <a href="/matthew/4-16.htm" title="The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.">Matthew 4:16</a>, where see Note. Here they carry on the thought of the sunrise lighting up the path of those who had sat all night long in the dark ravine, and whose feet were now guided into “the way of peace,” that word including, as it always did, with the Hebrew, every form of blessedness.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/luke/1-80.htm">Luke 1:80</a></div><div class="verse">And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.</div>(80) <span class= "bld">And the child grew.</span>—We have no materials for filling up this brief outline of the thirty years that followed in the Baptist’s life. The usual Jewish education, the observance of the Nazarite vow, the death of his parents while he was comparatively young, an early retirement from the world to the deserts that surrounded the western shores of the Dead Sea, study and meditation given to the Law and the Prophets, the steadfast waiting for the consolation of Israel, possible intercourse with the Essenes who lived in that region, or with hermit-teachers, like Banus, the master of Josephus (<span class= "ital">Life, c.</span> 1), whose form of life was after the same fashion as his own: this we may surmise as probable, but we cannot say more. Whatever may have been the surroundings of his life, he entered upon his work in a spirit which was intensely personal and original.<p><div id="botbox"><div class="padbot"><div align="center">Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers<br /><br />Text Courtesy of <a href="//biblesupport.com" target="_top">BibleSupport.com</a>. 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